Last Tuesday, 2009-10-13, Microsoft released a whole bunch of patches, my computer apparently needed 19 (?!) security patches. Ray charles genius of pop music. One of them failed dramatically, and I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to get this security patch to install. Dec 16, 2008 Having released SP3 in 32-bit, 64-bit and IA64 flavors, Microsoft informed that the x86 version of the refresh was capable of upgrading 32-bit instances of SQL Server 2005 running on. Nov 07, 2005 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (SQL Server Express) is a powerful and reliable data management product that delivers rich features, data protection, and performance for embedded application clients, light Web applications, and local data stores. This is “ MS SQL Server 2005 SP3 Cumulative Hotfix (KB970892)”, and I can not believe how difficult this has been to install. My first approach was just to download the hotfix separately from here: I’m running Vista Ultimate x64, so I downloaded the x64 version. However, when I selected my database “ MSSMLBIX – SQL Server Database Services 2005” the details section says that: Setup cannot update SQL Server Database Services 2005 x86 on this computer. To proceed, run the Hotfix Setup program for the x86 platform instead. (Which is odd, because later I tried a re-install of SQL Server Express 2005 and I could ONLY run the x64 bit version). So I dutifully downloaded the x86 version of the KB970892 hotfix. Here’s a video of the results: Sigh. Problem Event Name: APPCRASH Application Name: hotfix.exe Application Version: 1.4.1572.0 Application Timestamp: 4919b4d5 Fault Module Name: StackHash_e52f Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0 Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000 Exception code: c0000005 Exception Offset: 002d002d Additional information 1: e52f The knowledge base article had links to a number of suggestions, such as setting ALL SQL Server windows services to start up automatically, however that didn’t work for me. VERY BAD Microsoft Support So yesterday, I finally called Microsoft Support at 1-866-PCSAFETY and I spent from 11am until 4:30pm on the phone! Fortunately I just put them on speaker phone and worked on my laptop, but it was still an unbelievably frustrating experience! First I talked with Lance, but after about 30 minutes the call was cut off and I was left with a dial tone. I waited for about 20 minutes but he never called back. Then I talked with Angie (who seemed to be much more persistent and friendly), and after trying a bunch of stuff (some of it the same as Lance) she transferred me to Ruchi, who seemed to be slightly more knowledgeable. Ruchi tried to uninstall SQL Server 2008. The SQL Server 2005 instance that’s running on my machine was installed with Microsoft Office Small Business, and I’ve also installed SQL Server 2008 express as part of my development environment. Unfortunately most of the SQL Server 2008 stuff failed to uninstall half way through the uninstall; she had also renamed a bunch of directories (c: windows SoftwareDistribution and c: windows system32 catroot), and run a few batch files that changed directory permissions to “Everybody” so that when the call was disconnected (!) my machine was left in a very indeterminate/messy state!! All the calls (obviously to somewhere very far away) had very bad connections, and the line was full of static, crackles and pops and I could barely hear them and they could barely hear me, so I’m not terribly surprised that these calls kept being disconnected, except that I didn’t have a case number and now I had a computer in a really bad state. What was (slightly) amusing is that they all kept saying, “is your phone okay, it seems to be bad” – how strange that if I call anybody in Canada or the USA my phone seems just fine Anyway, about an hour after that call was disconnected another gentleman called me and asked me a bunch of questions and had no interest in using Microsoft Easy Assist to connect to my computer (he actually trusted me). However he finally gave up and suggested I try the paid SQL Server support team’s support. It doesn’t seem “right” to pay for help fixing the mess their support people created on my computer trying to fix a security fix that they wrote that apparently lots of other people are having problems with! Trying myself (again) So I thought about the problem for a while, and decided to uninstall SQL Server 2005 – I haven’t used the small-business side of Office for a while, and I secretly wondered if it might not connect to a (repaired) SQL Server 2008 instance instead. ![]() ![]() Unfortunately I couldn’t uninstall SQL Server 2005, because it said there was a registry problem. So instead I decided to re-install SQL Server 2005, and I downloaded it from here: I figured after my previous experience with the hot fix installer that I needed the x86 version, but that wouldn’t install so I downloaded the x64 version and that installed just fine. Then Windows Update said it successfully installed the update! Unfortunately, after rebooting and asking Windows Update to “Check for Updates” it found “ MS SQL Server 2005 SP3 Cumulative Hotfix” again!! So I then installed the KB update that I had downloaded again (the x86 one that crashed in the video above) and it worked!! This time there was two instances of the database present, the SQL Express version which the hot fix installed indicated was already updated, but the MSSMLBIX version was “Upgradable”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |