Today I will discuss a strange SQL Server installation failure scenario,where the setup was failing with a misguided error message. This blog post will be helpful in avoiding any SQL Server installation issues due to bad media if the steps mentioned are followed properly. This will be helpful when one ISO file is used for multiple installations, company wide. Below is the snapshot of the error message received.
Error Text SQL Server Setup failure. ------------------------- SQL Server Setup has encountered the following error: ", hexadecimal value 0x11, is an invalid character. Line 31, position 52.. The strange thing was that the installation was done on a fresh Windows Server 2008 R2 Virtual Machine and the media was a fresh download from MSDN. I started looking into the logs for further understanding of the issue.
Summary_SQLNODE1_20131127_141516_ComponentUpdate.txt Overall summary: Final result: Failed: see details below Exit code (Decimal): -2146232000 Exit facility code: 19 Exit error code: 6464 Exit message: '', hexadecimal value 0x11, is an invalid character. Line 31, position 52. Start time: 2013-11-27 14:17:02 End time: 2013-11-27 14:21:30 Requested action: ComponentUpdate Exception help link:
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkId=20476&ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&EvtSrc=setup.rll&EvtID=50000&ProdVer=11.0.2100.60&EvtType=0x066FCAFD%400x5539C151&EvtType=0x066FCAFD%400x5539C151
Detail_ComponentUpdate.txt (01) 2013-11-27 14:21:30 Slp: WER: Result of the submission:: 'WerReportCancelled' (01) 2013-11-27 14:21:30 Slp: WER: Submitted 1 of 1 failures to the Watson data repository (01) 2013-11-27 14:21:30 Slp: (01) 2013-11-27 14:21:30 Slp: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (01) 2013-11-27 14:21:30 Slp: (01) 2013-11-27 14:21:30 Slp: Error result: -2146232000 (01) 2013-11-27 14:21:30 Slp: Result facility code: 19 (01) 2013-11-27 14:21:30 Slp: Result error code: 6464 (01) 2013-11-27 14:21:30 Slp: SQM Service: Sqm does not have active session.
SqlSetup_1.log under the location %temp% was not pointing to a meaningful error message Setup mutex has been released SQM key not found Setup closed with exit code: 0x84C40013
Later I captured process monitor trace (
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx) but that did not help either. The strangest thing is that the media was working fine on my other operating systems lying on physical machine. It took a lot of team effort to figure out that the issue was with the media, with the help of checksum verification of the downloaded ISO file.
Steps to verify the ISO checksum
- Download the File Checksum Integrity Verifier (fciv.exe) from https://support.microsoft.com/kb/841290.
- The above KB lists the steps to use this tool.
- Installing the package will prompt where to extract the utility. I extracted it to the location where my SQL ISO file was present.
- Open command prompt an navigate to location of fciv.exe and run below command:
- This command generate the SHA1 code 0d878a8136fd657d9800f05322b0d4594bce92b8
- This code was different from actual media SHA1 code (Case Sensitive) 07DBC8EAFE16DCC0BF8888F7C55105BC02CE0211
- You will be able to find the SHA1 code in the details section of the media download page of the media. (MSDN subscriber download page).
