Question : Problems Installing MSDE

I am attempting to install MSDE 2000 on a Win2k3 Server and have had the following problems:-
1. If I just run the setup.exe i get an error message saying I need to use the SAPWD switch to set a strong password.
2. If I run the following:-
C:\MSDE\setup.exe SAPWD=mypassword (C:\MSDE is where I extracted the files and mypassword is a 10 letter password I have choosen).
The installation appears to run until the very last second when the blue goes backwards and the installation box disappears with no error message.

Any Ideas? Many Thanks, Kevin.

Answer : Problems Installing MSDE

Well - I installed MSDE on a Windows 2003 the other day and got similar messages.

You need to be a member of the admin group ofc....

- First of all - make sure you have the latest MSDE - and the latest sp for Windows 2003.  Otherwise you'll get in trouble when you try to connect to it.  There is some knowledge base article on that....  You might have problems installing it alltogether perhaps.

- Then - do a complete uninstall from Add/Remove programs.

- Remove the previous installation - the complete directory.

- Find all references to MS-SQL in the registry and delete it - as explained in the microsoft article aronabend pointed out
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320873

- open the command prompt  in the directory where the msde setup.exe is.   Type in the following (modifying as neccessary):
setup.exe sapwd=YOURPASSWORD instancename=YOURINSTANCE targetdir=TARGETDIR securitymode=SQL

TARGETDIR is for instance, c:\msde\data\     -  remember tthe trailing \
and a MSQL$YOURINSTANCE will be created there.


This worked for me - but I recall having problems until I completely removed and reinstalled, cause I did a typo in the setup line the first time.

Hope this works.

Best regards,
bragn