How to check/change MySQL named pipe settings? I'm having a hard time finding anything on this because I don't know what to call it.  But when you install MySQL it asks you if you want to allow connections to the database from other machines or not, and gives you an option to use named pipe.   Well, I want to check how a particular server is setup and change it.  How do you do that? I mean without reinstalling.
If you are using Windows, you need not worry about named pipes at all. Why ?
Years ago, MySQL for Windows had distributed three(3) different executables:

mysqld.exe
mysqld-nt.exe
mysqld-max-nt.exe

The two executeables mysqld-nt.exe and mysqld-max-nt.exe used the named pipes protocol. This is briefly mentioned in Chapter 23 Section 23.2 Page 353 Bulletpoint 3 of the Book

I have a 3-year-old post about this (MySQL-NT is crashing frequently)
Those NT-based mysqld executables are no longer being distributed. Even for mysqld-nt, --enable-named-pipe was not enabled by default. The option is still available today for mysqld.exe.
Do yourself a favor and do not enable it since there is so little documentation on using this protocol. It was originally meant for Windows NT (Not There).
YOUR ACTUAL QUESTION
You can run
SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE 'named_pipe';

It will either say ON or OFF.
You can configure it by adding this to my.ini under the [mysqld] group header
[mysqld]
named-pipe

and restarting mysqld.exe by running (as Administrator)
C:\&gt; net stop mysql
C:\&gt; net start mysql