SqlServer 2005's installer... Oracle Quality, at last!
SqlServer 2005's installer is a bit hopeless. It needs IE to
get you started. Not a problem. I open the page in IE 6 on
XP, I give it permission to run objects/activex and what
have you. Then I click a link. "Error on page", IE says.
So hunting through the sourcecode I find a link, to an .hta
page. Also doesn't work. So I hunt through that sourcecode
as well and find a setup.exe. Unfortunately for me, it was
in the Tools folder. I run it, but at the end,
of course, no SqlServer 2005 installation. Just docs
'n tools. Though the installer gives you the suggestion
everything is installed. It even displays the dialog where
it explains you have to run the config wizard to start
services.
Why on earth isn't there a single installer, which simply
starts with a .exe, like in SqlServer 2000? It's great
Sqlserver finally got a lot of Oracle's features, but one
'feature' wasn't that required to be implemented in
SqlServer: Oracle's horrible installer.
Ok, take 14...
(Update): Ok, the setup.exe in the Servers folder is
the real setup. So don't bother with the setup in the Tools
folder nor with the .htm files or .hta files. Also, if
you're installing on a system where SqlServer 2000 is
already installed, be sure to select during the setup of
SqlServer 2005 for a named instance and give it a logical
name, like SqlServer2005 (don't include spaces). This way
you can refer to the SqlServer instance as
yoursystemname\SqlServer2005 in the connection string
for connections to SqlServer 2005 and
yoursystemname in the connection string for
connections to SqlServer 2000.
Another tip: after installation of SqlServer 2005 and/or
VS.NET 2005, you'll probably notice a new service which eats
a lot of CPU time. This is the NGEN service, which is
NGEN-ing the .NET assemblies and sqlserver .net code. So be
patient (takes a couple of minutes)