Cannot Install SQL Server Express

Question

Answer 1

Hello @terry and fern clear

Thank you for your post.

I wonder if you have come across with this post but if not, it might a good step to overcome the issue stated previously.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/222447/failed-to-install-sql-server-2019-express.html

Looking forward to your feedback,

Cheers,

Please "Accept the answer" if the information helped you. This will help us and others in the community as well.

Answer 2

(1) Make sure that you install using administrator account

(2) Check the previews log file regarding the attempt to install

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/install-windows/view-and-read-sql-server-setup-log-files?view=sql-server-ver16&WT.mc_id=DP-MVP-5001699

And provide more information as you can find there

(3) do not install from the network. Instead downlead the full installation file locally and install from there

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-downloads

Choose download media

Please inform us if this worked and if not then please provide more information from the installation log file

Answer 3

In the path listed in the screenshot, there are log files for the installation. They can help you to find out which path that is causing the problem. The most interesting logs are summary.txt and detail.txt.

I think that in other cases when people has had this problem, they had been playing around with ProgramFilesDir and Setup has gotten lost halfway.