MariaDB errors in XAMPP 7.2.11

[bblake]

I finally upgraded my XAMPP development system to 7.2.11 (on windows 10) after successfully using an old XAMPP 5.6 system for over 2 years.
I tried to run a php script which executes a large MySQL insert query, but it hung. (No problems running it on old system). I checked and found multiple errors like the example below in the mysql_error log:

2018-10-28 11:14:32 17748 [ERROR] Incorrect definition of table mysql.column_stats: expected column 'min_value' at position 3 to have type varbinary(255), found type varchar(255).

I reinstalled XAMPP completely in case it was the size of the query. I ran some simple queries through phpMyAdmin only, and when I dropped a table, I found these errors in the mysql_error.log

2018-10-28 17:30:50 18908 [ERROR] mysqld.exe: Table '.\mysql\user' is marked as crashed and should be repaired
2018-10-28 17:30:50 18908 [ERROR] mysqld.exe: Table '.\mysql\db' is marked as crashed and should be repaired

I had done nothing except create and delete a simple table. I repaired the tables mentioned (again, using phpMyAdmin) and tried a shorter version of the large query. Again the system hung. Again I got the list of errors mentioned above. I also note that in the mysql_error.log there are these messages:

2018-10-29 11:18:58 10144 [Note] InnoDB: The log sequence number 1835037 in ibdata file do not match the log sequence number 5242381 in the ib_logfiles!
2018-10-29 11:18:59 10144 [Note] InnoDB: Restoring possible half-written data pages from the doublewrite buffer...

A very short version of the insert query does run.
As above - I completely rebuilt the 7.2.11 system (and am running only straightforward and simple queries) and get unexpected errors with even the simplest actions carried out only with phpMyAdmin.
Is there something seriously wrong with MariaDB on XAMPP 7.2.11 or is there something I can do to fix the errors. Everything I've done has worked fine on older versions of XAMPP over many years.

[bblake]

I guess no one else is having these problems, as there are no replies.

I have found that there is a way to clear the 3rd set of message (ie the ones below), namely to shut down mySQL manually:

2018-10-29 11:18:58 10144 [Note] InnoDB: The log sequence number 1835037 in ibdata file do not match the log sequence number 5242381 in the ib_logfiles!
2018-10-29 11:18:59 10144 [Note] InnoDB: Restoring possible half-written data pages from the doublewrite buffer...

I found a report of this problem, also using XAMPP. This said that the reason was that MySQL is not being closed correctly.
The recommended solution is to shut down manually with mysqladmin --user=root --password= shutdown. I did this, and this cleared the messages. Ominously, I then found I could recreate them by shutting MySQL from the control panel, and then restarting. This seems consistent - the control panel appears to shut down MySQL, but nothing is written to the log. On restart the messages return. They can be cleared by the above command.

[JJ_Tagy]

I never use the control panel to shut down MySQL anymore. I always use the command line to shut down cleanly.