When installing SQL Server 2008 one can run into “‘Reboot required check failed” situation.
After seeing it few times already, I think a solution is worth mentioning.
“Why don’t you just reboot?”, you say… Well, most likely it would not help you, but try it first.
If this would not help, then try the following:
- Start regedit.exe
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager
- Locate PendingFileRenameOperations
- Remove any data associated with the value (you may want to export the value for later review)
- Reboot and rerun installation, check should pass.
Update. As a respond to some comments about solution above not always work you may consider the following:
- Make sure that after you reboot entry in the registry does not reappear.
If it does, remove it again, but do not reboot, just go ahead with installation process and click “ReRun”. Most likely you would be fine now. - You may also try and see that other ControlSet001, ControlSet002, etc do not suffer from the same problem (solution mentioned by Mike Hills below).
- There was mentioning that some installations of Visual Studio 2008 could cause check to fail as well. So if nothing from above helped, uninstall Visual Studio (comes with light version of SQL Server), install SQL Server and then reinstall Visual Studio again.
Lets see why would entry reappear… This may happen if there is a driver or application which supports “recovery” mode or plain virus is around and after reboot it is trying to finish the deployment process again. In any situation try and look closer: what app file belongs to, if there are other solutions to the problem so that original process would finish properly, etc.
Update: Recently I was working on the unrelated setup automation for Visual Studio and stepped on a hidden gem which may work here as well: when running setup from command prompt, Windows Installer accepts a parameter called SkipRules. It worth mention the following “How to: Install SQL Server 2008 from the Command Prompt” first and then look at desired parameter
/SkipRules=VSShellInstalledRule RebootRequiredCheck
We can ignore first rule, since it is VS related, but second is the one you may want to try.
31 Comments
Rob Laing · May 29, 2009 at 04:12
Have same problem installing X86 version SQL 2008 on windows XP prof. But PendingFileRenameOperations entries are all empty. So, where to from here???
Serguei Dosyukov · May 29, 2009 at 10:00
Rob,
from some other discussions please try clean up the following entries. In general they should be empty, but you may have some process putting stuff there. Do not reboot, just rerun check…
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServicesOnce
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
If there is nothing there then I would check what applications are in Startup folder to be run every time. If you do find something there try to close these one by one until check pass.
Please feel free to comment about your findings
Rob Laing · May 30, 2009 at 09:14
Thanks for that. I have to confess in my haste I didn’t notice a subtle difference in the name PendingFileRenameOperations. I don’t actually have this key anywhere but I do have FileRenameOperations in its place! This is what I was referring to.
All the RunOnce keys are empty.
I’ll check the startup stuff and see if that helps.
I do have a logitech web cam – could that be an issue (given the refernence to logitech in the comments above)?
I also have SQL Server 2005 Express installed???
Cheers
Rob
Serguei Dosyukov · May 30, 2009 at 15:50
What version of the Windows are you using?
Logitech driver is usually an issue. It may change if they release a new driver set.
Problem above was reported for both SQL Server 2005 and 2008.
Could Express edition cause this error, I do not think so, but you can try and stop SQL Server associated services and see if it would help.
Rob Laing · May 31, 2009 at 05:00
Windows XP Prof SP3.
What do I have to do – uninstall the logitech drv?
Serguei Dosyukov · May 31, 2009 at 13:56
If it was a driver then you would be able intall using one of solutions above…
If you have VPC or WMWare I would try installing there first with XPSP3 installed…
WMWare allows you recreteate image of your main system and then you can play with settings without a chance to break your main installation.
Daniel Wilson · Jun 8, 2009 at 18:16
Worked great for me on Vista Business 64-bit. I did have to run Regedit as Administrator …
Jamie Snell · Aug 6, 2009 at 15:57
I was using a logitech mouse.
This fix worked for me also.
SQL Server 2008 installed fine.
Simon Mitchell · Sep 28, 2009 at 08:22
Thanks – that worked like a treat 🙂 Microsoft had 3 pages of reasons why this was caused but no solution 😉
greg · Oct 30, 2009 at 17:43
logitech was exactly the culprit. removed the regedit line and sql worked fine