Installing SQL Management Studio Express on Vista x64
When installing SQL Management Studio Express on Windows
Vista x64 (and, perhaps, x86 too) you may well get an error code 29506, the installation will fail and roll-back. This appears to be a security issue with Windows Vista. I've seen this happen a few times on products where the installation does not have a bootstrapper (setup.exe) but just a lone .msi installer package. It seems that while installations get elevated privilege, that's still not equivalent to installing as the administrator. The trouble with an MSI file is that you cannot right click it and "Run as Administrator". To work around this, you can either log in as Administrator and the install should then work, but if (like me) you prefer to keep your administrator account disabled and isolated, here is an alternative that has actually worked for me in a few different situations. We'll cobble together a makeshift bootstrapper (of sorts) that does nothing but chain the msi file, this gives us a convenient target to right-click-and-run-as-administrator.
- Copy the installer package (.msi file) to a convenient location (I generally use the root of my system drive, C:\ but any path will do).
- Create a new text file (on the desktop is fine). Insert the text:
START /WAIT C:\MyInstallerPackage.msi
(obviously you need to substitute your own path and filename for the underlined part above). - Save your text file as Install.bat (or rename it to give it the .bat extension if you already saved it).
- Right-click your new batch file, then select Run As Administrator...
- Approve the UAC prompt and away you go. Your package should now install.