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I'm experiencing an issue with SQL Server Express service not starting on a user's laptop, and it gives the following errors when I tried to start it from under services and from the SQL Server Configuration Manager. I have uninstalled it and removed all related files and reinstalled,but it didn't work. Can you please assist Screenshot 2025-09-30 150147.jpg
Screenshot 2025-10-01 104945.jpg
Core component of SQL Server for storing, processing, and securing data
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the laptop has a sector size (too large) not supported by sqlserver. see this guide:
note: one option not listed is using a docker image rather than native install.
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Hi @Mayada Suliman ,
I hope the explanation provided has helped you address the issue. If you have any questions feel free to reach out.
Thank You
Hi @Mayada Suliman ,
Since we didn't hear back from you, we would be closing this thread. If you face any issue, feel free to reach out.
Thank You
Shruti
Hi,
Thank you for providing the above, but it didn't solve the problem.
It has been solved after updating the laptop's SSD firmware and the BIOS.
regards,
Thanks for reporting back!
That's an interesting solution I have not heard of before. Hm, could it be that the updated firmware results in Windows 11 reporting a sector size <= 4096?If you have any links from the vendor to share out the firmware and BIOS updates to share, that would be interesting.
Sure, the laptop is a Dell Pro 14 Premium PA14250
SSD firmware
The BIOS installation from Windows was not working, so I used the BIOS flash update remote
Immediately after the BIOS update, the PhysicalBytesPerSectorForPerformance value has changed from 65536 to 4096, and the SQL service started automatically
The suggested solution has changed the PhysicalBytesPerSectorForPerformanc value to the same, but unfortunately SQL service didn't start and it was giving the same error
Thanks for the update!
Hm, there are a couple of values, I think all of these need to be at most 4096 for a happy ending.
Then again, being on the most recent version of firmware and BIOS can never be a bad idea, so it was the best thing to do anyway.