Today I’ve happy started to install SQL Server 2008R2 on my development machine, which has this software installed

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
• SQL Server 2008 SP1 CU5
• Visual Studio 2008 SP1
• BOL October 2009
• AdventuresWorks2008 Databases SR4
• Visual Studio 2010 RTM

So, all the basic standard stuff.

SQL Server 2008 R2 installation went smooth ‘till somewhere in the middle, where the rule engine checks that software pre-requisite are satisfied before starting to copy files.

Here I had this @][@@[?!?! error:

“The SQL Server 2005 Express Tools are installed. To continue, remove the SQL Server 2005 Express Tools.”

Fun enough, I don’t have and I’ve never had SQL Server 2005 Express on my machine.

Armed with patience I analyzed the install log here

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\yyyymmdd_hhmmss\Detail.txt

and I’ve found that the rule “Sql2005SsmsExpressFacet” is the one in charge of this check and it look for existance of the registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\ShellSEM (on x86)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\ShellSEM (on x64)

In my registry I’ve found that key existsing, due to the installation of the uber-cool Red-Gate SQL Search.

I removed the registry key and here it is! SQL Server 2008 R2 is installing while I’m writing this post.

A note to Microsoft: can you please add more detailed information on the setup while such error happens. Just saying “you have SQL Server 2005 Express installed” is not enough. Please show us what the rule look for and why it has failed directly in the Detailed Report, so that we don’t have to spend time to look for the needle in the logs. Thanks! :)

PS

I did a side-by-side installation with the existing SQL Server 2008 instance.