Bedrock on Windows: “Error establishing DB connection” triggered by parallel requests

bedrock
1

I’m experiencing an issue with Bedrock on Windows (XAMPP/Laragon).
Clean WordPress works perfectly, but Bedrock fails only when two parallel requests are made (for example: double-click navigation in wp-admin, or a page load + admin-ajax heartbeat at the same time).

Symptoms:

  • First click or single request → works normally

  • Two fast or parallel requests → Error establishing a database connection

  • Switching from XAMPP to Laragon does NOT change anything

  • MySQL error logs show no errors (only sha256_password deprecation warnings)

  • WP_DEBUG produces no PHP errors

  • The issue appears before WordPress loads, inside Bedrock bootstrap

Important facts:

  • Clean WordPress (same database, same server, same PHP/MySQL) works with no issues

  • Bedrock triggers the error only when there are concurrent DB connections

  • MySQL is not crashing and has no corrupt tables

  • Issue is reproducible with default Bedrock installation

What I’ve tested:

  • Correct DocumentRoot (/web)

  • Correct .env (DB_HOST=127.0.0.1)

  • SSL or non-SSL doesn’t matter

  • Tried PHP 8.x, MySQL/MariaDB different versions

  • Persistent DB connections disabled

  • IPv6 disabled, bind-address=127.0.0.1

  • skip-name-resolve, increased max_connections, increased timeouts

  • Created dedicated MySQL user with mysql_native_password

  • The problem persists in all configurations

Behavior summary:
Bedrock seems to fail establishing a second database connection on Windows, only when requests occur very close together. The same environment works flawlessly with classic wp-config.php.

Question:
Is this a known limitation/behavior on Windows environments?
Is there anything in the Bedrock bootstrap or environment loading that might cause race-condition issues with parallel DB connections on Windows?

Any additional debugging directions or configuration recommendations are appreciated.

2

This doesn’t appear to be a MySQL or WordPress core issue, since classic WordPress works correctly in the same environment. What you’re likely encountering is a Windows-specific race condition during Bedrock’s bootstrap, where environment loading (.env parsing, config resolution, and early database initialization) can fail when two requests start almost at the same time. On Windows (XAMPP or Laragon), file locking and process handling differ from Linux, and Bedrock’s additional bootstrap layer makes this more visible under parallel requests. This isn’t a hard MySQL limit, but a timing issue that surfaces only with concurrent connections. The most reliable workaround is running Bedrock under WSL2 or Docker, or moving to a Linux-based environment, which usually resolves the issue entirely. If the repeated connection failures have caused or exposed any database corruption, you can verify and repair the database using third party repair tool like Stellar Repair for MySQL, but the root cause itself is almost certainly the Windows environment rather than Bedrock or MySQL misconfiguration.