I received the following generic popup message when installing a new instance on SQL 2005 SP3 cluster running on Windows Server 2003 R2: 

I found that after I canceled the failed installation, more information was written to the setup log.  That’s when I found these messages:

Error: Action “RunRemoteSetupAction” failed during execution.  Error information reported during run:

Attempting to determine log files for remote install.

Connection to remote computer’s scheduler service.

Error: SetTargetComputer on \\NODE2 failed with

Unable to start service (1058)

WinException while starting remote setup.

        Error Code: 0×80070422 (1058)

Windows Error Text: The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

I saw that the Task Scheduler was disabled on NODE2 (per our build standard).  I started the service, and the SQL instance installation completed successfully.

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Had a support call today about a user not receiving email on his Blackberry device.  After a phone call to Research in Motion, we determined the user was out of the coverage area.  Very frustrating.  All the information was in the Blackberry Enterprise Server’s MAGT log, I just didn’t know how to find it.  Here’s how I figured it out.

Previously I had posted the following SQL query that determines a user’s name based upon the BES ID number.

SELECT     Id, DisplayName, UserName
FROM         UserConfig
WHERE     (Id = ‘73′)

I changed the query around to find the BES UserID based upon the UserName:

SELECT     Id, DisplayName, UserName
FROM         UserConfig
WHERE     (UserName = ‘jsmith’)

This query gave me the BES UserID, which was 779 in my case.

I then opened up the BES MAGT log, and searched for the following string:

UserId: 779 is out of coverage

I found it repeatedly.  My user was out of coverage all day, which is why no mail  was received on his Blackberry.

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Things didn’t go too smoothly yesterday when I was trying to reconfigure our SQL 2005 cluster and it’s database locations.  At one point I couldn’t even get SQL Configuration Manager to start up.  At various times I received both of the following errors.

The request failed or the service did not respond in a timely fashion. Consult the event log or other applicable error logs for details.  

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The Problem

SQL Agent won’t start on a Windows cluster for a particular instance

The Symptoms

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I was troubleshooting a Blackberry Manager problem today that required the BES MDS credentials.  The admin thought he knew what the credentials were, but wasn’t sure.  So I wrote the following SQL query and ran it against the Blackberry Enterprise Server’s BesMgmt database to get the user name and password:  

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Exact Error Message

Workaround:

Perform the following to resolve this issue:

1. On the SQL server, stop the Backup Exec Remote Agent Service from Windows Control Panel > Services.

\Program Files\VERITAS\Backup Exec\NT

for Backup Exec version 11d and above, the default location is 

for 11d and above:

\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\RAWS

3. Rename the bedssql2.dll file to bedssql2.old

If the SQL/MSDE is installed on a Remote Server:

WARNING:  Renaming the bedssql2.dll will effectively disable the SQL agent on the server it is renamed upon.  If the SQL agent is purchased in the future, the issue with the corrupt database(s) must be resolved first, and backup of the SQL servers on which the bedssql2.dll was changed is desired – the bedssql2.old file MUST be renamed back to bedssql2.dll. 

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To change the SQL sa password from a command prompt:

Start a command prompt by typing Start – Run – cmd

Enter the following commands, pressing Enter after each line

OSQL -S yourservername -E
    1> EXEC sp_password NULL, ‘yourpassword’, ‘sa’
    2> GO

Where yourservername is the name of your server and yourpassword is the new sa account password.  Type exit twice to return to the server desktop. 

This works in SQL 2005, I don’t have access to other versions so I can’t say if it will or won’t work other versions of SQL.

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KB 321185 describes how to determine the version of SQL Server you are running. To determine which version of SQL you are running, enter the following into the SQL Query Analyzer:

SELECT  SERVERPROPERTY('productversion'), SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel'), SERVERPROPERTY ('edition')

The results are:

The following table lists the Sqlservr.exe version number:

Notice SQL Server 2000 SP3 and SP3a have the same version of sqlserver.exe. SP3 is no longer available, and if you already have SP3 installed you do not need to apply SP3a. The changes made to SP3a were in the setup program, not in the actual Service Pack. There is a newer version of MDAC in SP3a, but you can download that separately.

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At one of my client locations we use Sonicwall’s Viewpoint reporting system to gather usage data from the Sonicwall firewall and content filter.  Viewpoint is a pita to upgrade or move to a new machine, and I treat the program with care, since it’s very easy to unintentionally break. I was upgrading from an old version (2.9) only because I could no longer access the administrative interface through a web browser to run reports.

One very important thing to know about Viewpoint is it will not install properly on a machine that had any previous instances of SQL Server or MSDE on it.  Plus, if you want to use SQL Server instead of MSDE for the Viewpoint database, Sonicwall will not provide you technical support.

After much trial and error I found that just removing prior SQL/MSDE instances was not enough to make the installation a success.  I would complete phase 1 of the installation, only to have phase 2 fail with the following error:

SQL Server does not exist or access denied

I searched the Sonicwall tech support web site and forums, but could only find one document that addressed this error, and of course it didn’t work (not a big suprise, if you’ve ever dealt with Sonicwall tech support you know what I mean)

In order to complete the Viewpoint 4.1 Installation I had to:

1) Uninstall the SQL/MSDE from Add/Remove Programs and any other software that used SQL/MSDE.  In my case, I had a copy of Dell’s IT Assistant, a part of the OpenManage Management Station.  Reboot.

2) Use MyUninstaller to remove Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005, even though the uninstallation process in step 1 had removed it from Add/Remove Programs.

3) Delete the sgmsconfig.xml from the root of the installation drive (C:\ in my case)

4) Rename all of the remaining Viewpoint and SQL/MSDE directories on the hard drive

5) Reboot, then run the Viewpoint installer.  I was able install without problems, but phase 2 takes a looooong time, and I thought the machine was locked up.  Be patient.

I did find one glitch during the installation – even though I was asked what password I wanted to use for the Viewpoint login, it was not applied.  I had to use the default login and password, which you can find in the Viewpoint 4.1 Administrator’s Guide.

You may find Some of the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles I found helpful if you are having SQL/MSDE uninstallation problems:

KB 311762 – How to identify which MSI file was used for an existing MSDE installation

KB 823467 – BUG: You cannot start the SQL Server Agent Service for an instance of SQL Server or the SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine that has the same instance name as a previously uninstalled instance of the SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (Windows)

KB 317619 – FIX: Cannot Remove Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine After You Upgrade to MSDE 2000 SP2

KB 320873 – How to manually remove a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000) instance

KB 909967 – How to uninstall an instance of SQL Server 2005 manually

Aaron also has a detailed procedure for removing SQL Express manually.  It also seems that the SQL Express uninstaller requires the .NET framework 2.0, so if you don’t have the .NET 2.0 framework, you may need to install it prior to uninstalling SQL Express.

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