Today I had quite interesting experience, when I tried to install Microsoft SQL Server 2000 on Windows Server 2003 SP1, which was running in a Virtual PC “box”.

I had the installation files on my host machine into a folder, which was “Shared Folder” for this Virtual PC. When I started the install, first I’ve got the prompt that “SQL Server 2000, versions lower than SP2 might be incompatible with Windows Server 2003”, advising me to apply SP2 as soon as possible. So far – so good, “Continue”… and wham – “Internal Error, please contact Microsoft Technical Support”.

WTF?

Instead of contacting Microsoft Techinical Support :), I decided to ask directly my colleague, who is sitting next to my desk and has quite an experience with these damn database servers. He also was a bit amazed of this behavior, but his advice was “put the damn shared folder besides and copy the installation first on your Virtual HDD”, and then to try again. Then he left to get some smoke into his lungs.

Althought I was not believing this would help, I copied the installation files on the Virtual PC’s virtual hard drive, and retried the installation from there. And (oh bloody miracle) it worked! I was already bit pissed off, but since I did not knew who to blame first (except me, of course), I decided to let it go.

However, I still have the feeling that this is not a Virtual PC issue. It seems more SQL Server setup issue. I think that if your MS SQL Server 2000 installation files lays down on a network drive (since VPC “Shared Folders” are nothing more than a shared network drive for all the software, who’s running in the virtual machine), you may see the same problem! If you see it, try to copy the files on your local hard drive and it will most probably work.

The following MS SQL 2K SP4 installation went fine. I didn’t try installing it from my network share, but I directly unpacked it and let it go from my Virtual HDD.

Computers are strange animals, aren’t they 🙂 ?