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…