Okay, so I’ve been fighting with this workstation that has a corrupt Sql Server 2005 install, and I’m unable to re-install or remove the old install. I’ve tried manually removing registry keys and the whole nine. I even found a few references to articles posted about the topic.
I finally figured it out, so I thought I’d share since I’ve had to do this more than once. My situation is that I have a machine with Sql Management Studio Express installed and I needed the full Management Studio installed. So while uninstalling a few components, I must’ve done it in the wrong order, my Sql Server Add/Remove just disappeared. So then I was unable to cleanly uninstall the software.
When I tried to re-install the client components, I kept getting this error:
A component that you have specified in the ADD_LOCAL property is already installed. To upgrade the existing component, refer to the template.ini and set the UPGRADE property to the name of the component.
Sounds a bit greek to me. But after a few minutes of reviewing google results for the subject, I found this article.
http://www.techtalkz.com/microsoft-sql-server/163115-uninstall-sql-2005-studio-express-so-i-can-install-sql-2005-t.html
In the last post, he mentions that he downloaded the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility and it worked. So I thought I’d give it a whirl since my local install was pretty much a handful of nastiness. So I downloaded the utility from Microsoft’s web site.
After installing, I ran the utility, found the missing add/remove items and removed them. Easy peasy…
Finally I restarted the Sql 2005 installer as normal, and the Client Components install went through without a problem.
Now I can get some work done…
