Help from Microsoft Product Support Services

In writing this chapter we contacted Ken Henderson, who is responsible for the Dallas, Texas, Product Support Services (PSS) group. Ken is a longtime SQL guy who knows his stuff. Ken connected us with some of his PSS guys, who told us about some of the common SQL 2005 install issues that people encounter and how to solve them. We got some information, presented here, from two generous guys: Eric Burgess and Bart Duncan. Both were enthusiastic, frank, and helpful.

Installing Client Tools from a Network Share

There is a common problem many folks run into when they try to install the SQL Client tools from a fileshare copied from the install CD. They get the following error:

 There was an unexpected failure during the setup wizard. You may review the setup logs and/or click the help button for more information. SQL Server Setup failed. For more information, review the Setup log file in %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\LOG\Summary.txt. 

When you go to the CORE(local).Log, you find the following information:

 Running: InstallToolsAction.10 at: 2006/0/18 11:35:13 Error: Action "InstallToolsAction.10" threw an exception during execution.  Error information reported during run: Target collection includes the local machine. Fatal Exception caught while installing package: "10"         Error Code: 0x80070002 (2) Windows Error Text: The system cannot find the file specified.   Source File Name: sqlchaining\sqlprereqpackagemutator.cpp Compiler Timestamp: Tue Aug  9 01:14:20 2005      Function Name: sqls::SqlPreReqPackageMutator::modifyRequest Source Line Number: 196 ---- Context ----------------------------------------------- sqls::InstallPackageAction::perform WinException caught while installing package. : 1603         Error Code: 0x80070643 (1603) Windows Error Text: Fatal error during installation.   Source File Name: packageengine\installpackageaction.cpp Compiler Timestamp: Fri Jul  1 01:28:25 2005      Function Name: sqls::InstallPackageAction::perform Source Line Number: 167 ---- Context ----------------------------------------------- sqls::InstallPackageAction::perform 

When you install from a networkshare, you must copy the contents of the two SQL install CDs to fileshares. There should be a share named Servers, which contains CD#1, and a share called TOOLS, which contains the contents for CD#2. These CDs are not marked clearly, and you may not copy CD#2 to the Tools share. The error we just showed you occurs as a result of this failure. Both of these fileshares should be under the same parent. Once you have copied CD#2 to the Tools folder, start setup again.

Admin Tools Not Installed by Default on Remote Cluster Nodes

To fix this, you must rerun setup on each of the secondary nodes to get the admin tool installed everywhere. Cluster installation is covered in Chapter 20.

Minimum Configuration Warning

SQL can install and run with the advertised 512MB RAM minimum, but it needs approximately 768MB of virtual memory. In other words, setup will fail spectacularly on a machine with just 512MB memory and no swap file. You'll need to temporarily create a swap file of at least 256MB (or add RAM).