SQL Server 2005 SP1 Debacle
Executive Summary: Despite hours of trying, I have had no success installing SQL Server 2005 SP1. Herein lies my sordid tale, and my conclusion that I’ll work on this no longer. Perhaps this post can save someone time trying all the things I did.
I have been trying off and on for about three weeks to install SP1 for SQL Server 2005. I think I wisely decided not to install it when it came out, because that was a couple of days before I headed to DevConnections in Nice, France earlier this month to do five SQL Server 2005 sessions. It’s never good to change configurations so soon before standing in front of people to show them stuff. I downloaded it though, and after I finished my last session I fired up the installation program.
Alas, it was not to install. For the record, I have attempted to install it on an IBM Thinkpad T40 laptop running the Developer’s Edition of SQL Server 2005, lots of memory, running as mere user. The default instance is SQL Server 2000 and I’m updating a named instance of SQL Server 2005.
I will say that I really like the design of the installation package. It makes the options easy, provides plenty of status information (maybe even a bit too much), and let’s you know the outcome. But with all that, I still don’t have it installed after many hours of trying and many attempts.
The first indication of a problem is when it tries to update Database Services. This dialog popped up:
The first couple of times this happened I went and shut down all the services and hit Try Again. That ended up making no difference, so all the subsequent times I just hit Continue, willing to do a reboot as a small cost of getting this thing installed.
Setup then continued on its merry way. A few moments later, though, I was greeted by this unhappy dialog:
Clicking the link did little to enlighten me:
Clicking the View link just lists a gajillion log files. I helpfully click Send Error Report so that Microsoft can share my pain, and installation continues:
Eventually, what can be installed is, and I get the Installation Complete dialog that betrays the fact that installation is very incomplete:
Sadness. I Googled the error message shown at the bottom of the dialog, “Unable to install Windows Installer MSP file,” which leads me to a KB article, “BUG: Error message when you try to install SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1: "Unable to install Windows Installer MSP file." Yowsa! Microsoft knows about this and has a fix!
Alas. Despite carefully following the directions—heeding, of course, the mandatory, dire warnings about messing with the registry—this does not change the outcome one whit.
So at this point I have updated all but the Database Services and have thrown hours of time that might otherwise been billable down the rabbit hole, never to be seen again. I will make nor further attempt until Microsoft re-releases this service pack. I’m not going to touch a server with SP1 until I’m a lot more confident in the package.
Security Note: I realize that the world isn’t yet attuned to running as a least privileged user, and I also realize that this is server software which has special security needs. So I tried it with RunAs, MakeMeAdmin, and finally—gasp!—logged in using a real Administrator account. The installation wouldn’t run with RunAs, and otherwise there was no difference in the outcome for any of the options. So this isn’t a least privileged user account issue.