{"id":37,"date":"2010-06-05T08:52:37","date_gmt":"2010-06-05T12:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.obieta.com\/?p=37"},"modified":"2010-06-05T08:52:37","modified_gmt":"2010-06-05T12:52:37","slug":"sql-server-2008-install-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/obieta.com\/?p=37","title":{"rendered":"SQL Server 2008 Install Nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"

SQL Server 2008 Install Nightmare<\/a><\/strong><\/span>
It all started with an installation of Visual Studio 2008 SP1, which included SQL Server Express 2005.\u00a0 From there I wished to install SQL Server 2008 Standard on the default port and upgrade SQL Server 2005 Express to SQL Server 2008 express.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this proved to be a troublesome desire.\u00a0 I have no idea what the cause is exactly, except that I was not the only one on my team to have issues.<\/p>\n

At this point, I am not sure the order that things occurred exactly, but I have a host of error messages and ways to handle them.\u00a0 I can’t say it will work for you – I sure hope you didn’t have to go through all these to install SQL Server 2008 – but I did so I decided to share the experience.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Uninstall procedure:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most important step with any failed SQL Server 2008 installation is uninstalling the failed attempt – yes, SQL Server 2008 needs to be uninstalled if an installation fails as it doesn’t automatically roll back.<\/p>\n

At the moment there is no complete knowledge base article on how to manually uninstall SQL Server 2008.\u00a0 However, there are instructions for how to uninstall an instance of SQL Server 2005 manually<\/a> and there is a lot of similarity with SQL Server 2008, so review and follow those instructions were it makes sense.\u00a0 Below is a list of the steps I followed:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Uninstall the the installation from Programs and Features<\/strong>\/Add Remove Programs<\/strong>, selecting Microsoft SQL Server 2008<\/strong> and double clicking to run the uninstaller. (You always need to begin with this step or the command line equivalent.)\u00a0 Do not use the Windows Installer Cleanup Tool to remove SQL Server 2008 without first trying to do so from Programs and Features<\/strong>\/Add Remove Programs<\/strong>. During the uninstall, you can choose (via series of check boxes), which components of SQL Server 2008 to uninstall – including any shared components for when you have multiple instances.\u00a0 In the case of multiple instances, each instance needs to be uninstalled independently.<\/li>\n
  2. Run
    SC.EXE query | find \/i “SERVICE_NAME: MSSQL”<\/span>
    to verify that there are no services instances for SQL Server that should have been deleted but weren’t.\u00a0 Any items that appear unexpectedly, should be removed with the command
    SC.EXE<\/span> delete <service name>
    Where service name is the name of the service returned by sc.exe query.<\/span>
    If SC.EXE<\/span> fails to uninstall the services and there are no other instances of SQL Server installed, delete registry keys HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMSSQLServer<\/span>, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesMSSQLSERVER<\/span> and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesSQLAgent<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Search for <Instance Name><\/span> in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall<\/span>.\u00a0 If you find any, usually on a value called InstanceId<\/span>, run
    MSIEXEC \/X <GUID><\/span>
    where the <GUID><\/span> is the key name containing the InstanceId<\/span> value.<\/li>\n
  4. Delete the following registry keys\/values if they exist\n