When I tried on Windows 2008 machine, here was the text

---------------------------
Rule Check Result
---------------------------
Rule "No-Reboot package is found on Vista/Windows Server 2008" failed.

This computer does not have the update package that ensures that the computer will not have to be rebooted because of the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 installation. Before setup is allowed to proceed, download and install the required update package from: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=195093. After you install the update package, the computer will require a reboot.
---------------------------
OK  
---------------------------

Nice thing is that there is a link mentioned, which would tell you what you are suppose to do.

I have not followed the link and installed dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64 from <DVD>\redist\DotNetFrameworks\dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64 and it also worked..

Happy learning!!

Here is the second part..

https://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverfaq/archive/2010/04/28/how-to-install-clustered-sql-server-2008-on-windows-2008-cluster-using-hyper-v-guest-clustering-part-2.aspx

Thanks for the response guys.. I really appreciate it.

https://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverfaq/archive/2010/03/30/how-to-install-clustered-sql-server-2008-on-windows-2008-cluster-using-hyper-v-guest-clustering-part-1.aspx

Work is in progress for rest part of series.

Happy Virtual Clustering !!!

-Balmukund

The SQL Server service failed to start. For more information, see the SQL Server Books Online topics, "How to: View SQL Server 2005 Setup Log Files" and "Starting SQL Server Manually

This is generic error and can be caused by many reasons. We need to look at SQL Error Logs / Event Logs and find out actual reason. From Event Log error was “The process terminated unexpectedly”. Not very useful in this case.

Next, we looked into SQL Error Log

2009-11-16 15:47:17.26 spid5s      Error: 15209, Severity: 16, State: 1.
2009-11-16 15:47:17.26 spid5s      An error occurred during encryption.

Above was the cause of SQL Startup failure. Basically there was an unhandled exception raise by SQLServr.exe process and terminated. If you search on support.microsoft.com for this error, this is the KB Error message when you try to install SQL Server Express or SQL Server. If you are using NTFS then first check KB before processing further.

In our case KB was not applicable because it was FAT file system and there is no option to set security as mentioned in KB. To troubleshoot further we have taken crash dump of SQL Server process using DebugDiag. You can refer to documentation to see how to take crash dump but I would show you what we got from the dump.

kernel32!RaiseException+0x53
msvcr80!_CxxThrowException+0x46
sqlservr!TurnUnwindAndThrowImpl+0x13c
sqlservr!ex_raise2+0x48f
sqlservr!ex_raise+0x68
sqlservr!RaiseCryptoError+0xda
sqlservr!CreateSrvMasterSecret+0x2d2
sqlservr!LoadSrvMasterSecret+0x139
sqlservr!LoadServiceMasterKey+0x11
sqlservr!StartUp::StartResourceDB+0x3ca
sqlservr!StartUp::OpenDBsAndRecover+0x4d8
sqlservr!StartUp::InitDBMS+0x287
sqlservr!SOS_Task::Param::Execute+0xe2
sqlservr!SOS_Scheduler::RunTask+0xb9
sqlservr!SOS_Scheduler::ProcessTasks+0x141
sqlservr!SchedulerManager::WorkerEntryPoint+0x1ab
sqlservr!SystemThread::RunWorker+0x7f
sqlservr!SystemThreadDispatcher::ProcessWorker+0x246
sqlservr!SchedulerManager::ThreadEntryPoint+0x143
msvcr80!_callthreadstartex+0x1b
msvcr80!_threadstartex+0x66
kernel32!BaseThreadStart+0x37

In layman terms, we were trying to create self generated certificate using Crypto API provided by windows. When we looked further, we found exception as 0xc000003a. This means STATUS_OBJECT_PATH_NOT_FOUND.

We took procmon (available at https://technet.microsoft.com/hi-in/sysinternals/default(en-us).aspx) and found interesting stuff

3:47:17.2609980 PM    lsass.exe    CreateFile    C:\WINDOWS\system32\Microsoft\Protect\S-1-5-18\User\Preferred    PATH NOT FOUND   
3:47:17.2612661 PM    lsass.exe    CreateFile    C:\WINDOWS\system32\Microsoft    NAME COLLISION   
3:47:17.2615210 PM    lsass.exe    CreateFile    C:\WINDOWS\system32\Microsoft\Protect    PATH NOT FOUND
3:47:17.2617194 PM    lsass.exe    CreateFile    C:\WINDOWS\system32\Microsoft\Protect\S-1-5-18    PATH NOT FOUND
3:47:17.2619209 PM    lsass.exe    CreateFile    C:\WINDOWS\system32\Microsoft\Protect\S-1-5-18\User    PATH NOT FOUND

So I can see PATH NOT FOUND, above this I can see NAME COLLISION. This essentially means that there is a object already existing. When we looked at customer’s machine, we found a file called “Microsoft” (Ideally, this should be a folder) which was causing SQLSetup to not to create a folder and hence failing. Lsass.exe is responsible for many things (refer documentation in KB308356)

To resolve the issue, we have renamed Microsoft file to Microsoft_1 and then as expected, sqlservr.exe was able to start and setup worked like a charm.

If you have any such issue, ProcMon is the first thing to look at along with Event Logs and SQL Error Logs.

Hope this helps someone on the earth (and beyond)!!!

- Balmukund

set nocount on
go
USE [tempdb]
GO
-- create a table with two columns
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[MyTest](
    [i] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
    [j] [char](8000) NULL
) 
GO
-- inserting 10000 rows
INSERT INTO dbo.MyTest (j) VALUES ('A')
GO 10000    -- this is another cool feature to run a batch in loop
-- below is to get the plan without running the query
SET SHOWPLAN_XML ON
GO
SELECT * FROM MyTest WHERE I = 5
GO
SET SHOWPLAN_XML OFF

Once you run above code and look at results in grid mode, you will see a hyperlink as below.

Clicking on hyperlink would open another windows in SSMS as shown below.

Hope this helps to someone in the world.

As always, comments are welcome.

- Balmukund

Erro1: Hyper-V launch failed; Either VMX not present or not enabled in BIOS.
Error2: Hyper-V launch failed; at least one of the processors in the system does not appear Error3: to provide a virtualization platform supported by Hyper-V.
Hyper-V launch failed; No-execute (NX) or DEP not enabled on processor 0x0 (check BIOS settings).

All of them were pointing to something wrong with BIOS setting. My search to internet ended in many links but finally I could make it work by setting below in BIOS settings on my DELL machine. (below specification)

System Model    OptiPlex 755

Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E6550  @ 2.33GHz, 2327 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

1. Security > Execute Disable (set to On)
2. Performance > Virtualization (set to On)
3. Performance > VT for Direct I/O Access (set to On)
4. Performance > Trusted Execution (set to Off)

After making above changes, I rebooted the machine and then I was able to use Hyper-V and create new virtual machine.

Stay tuned, I am starting my work to new blog series to install SQL 2008 Cluster on Windows 2008 Cluster.

For better search, below is the text of the message

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio:
Evaluation period has expired. For information on how to upgrade your evaluation software please go to https://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy

Have a close look at error… This is for Management Studio. This means that this is the problem with management studio only. If its not yet expired, inside of Management Studio, going to Help > About... still shows this the expiration countdown.

This is identified as a known issue where SSMS is not upgraded when you do edition upgrade for SQL Server 2008. To workaround the problem you can hack registry keys. Set CommonFiles registry value to 3 in HKLM\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\100\ConfigurationState Registry Hive. You will then need to reinstall (if the tools are not installed currently) or run edition Upgrade. Reference: connect bug

This is already fixed in SP1.

Update: 12 May 2009.

KB article published for same issue. https://support.microsoft.com/kb/971268

By the way, did you know...

1. You should NOT change the password from Services.msc for SQL Server. Only supported way to change it is from Enterprise Manager (in SQL 2000) and Configuration Manager (in SQL 2005 onwards)
2. If only service account password is changed using configuration manager, it does not need a restart of SQL Server Service.

Below is the script which could be used. Save the below script to .vbs file and make changes to reflect your instance name/Service name and account.

set sqlsvr = GetObject("WINMGMTS:\\.\root\Microsoft\SqlServer\ComputerManagement:SqlService.ServiceName='MSSQLSERVER',SQLServiceType=1")sqlsvr.SetServiceAccount "LocalSystem"

set browsersvr = GetObject("WINMGMTS:\\.\root\Microsoft\SqlServer\ComputerManagement:SqlService.ServiceName='SQLBrowser',SQLServiceType=1")

browsersvr.SetServiceAccount "NetworkService"

You can make changes to modify SQL Agent account as well. Hope this helps.