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SQL Server
A family of Microsoft relational database management and analysis systems for e-commerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions.
14,158 questions
First things first: what hardware do you have? If you have an ARM processor, beware that SQL Server does not support ARM. The rest of the answer assumes that you have a regular x64 processor.
My belief is that this is an error that occurs mainly in the situation when a user tried to install SQL Server and it failed with some error. The user might have tried some random cleanup and made renewed attempts. Because the cleanup was incomplete, Setup now fails with another error than it did originally.
Could this apply to you? Or did this happen on the first attempt? (If it does apply to you, don't feel bad. I think it is quite a natural path to take.)
Here is a link to an article that can help you to clean up properly: https://www.sql-easy.com/learn/how-to-uninstall-sql-server/. I have not tried it myself, but I learnt about it from a user who was in a similar situation as yours, and who was able to install SQL Server successfully after following the article.
If you make a new attempt after cleanup, and it still fails, you find log files in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\160\Setup Bootstrap\Log with one folder per attempt. (nnn is a three-digit number that depends on the version of SQL Server you are trying to install). The files of most interest are summary.txt, detail.txt and any file with ERRORLOG in the name. (The latter only appears if Setup came as far as trying to start SQL Server). Feel free to attach these to the thread here.