Tag Archives: installs

Trying to install System Center 2012

I have been battling this install for 2 days so far and not getting anywhere. There are a ton of sql prerequisites and the install error messages are very vague, like this message below:-IF
Surely it can’t be that hard to display the version of SQL server that is detected.

I’m currently following Harold Wong’s System Center install guide along with Matthew Peter’s guide and downloaded the Cumulative update 10 for SQL.
Attempting to install this patch on the server gives the error message below.
Screenshot - 1_3_2013 , 11_56_37 AM

The stupid thing about this is that neither 10.51.2500.0 or 10.1.2531.0 are valid sql version numbers. Select @@version returns the accurate 10.50.2500.0 which is sql 2008 r2 sp1 but it ignores the previous cumalative update that I’ve already installed.

So far my hopes for System Center have been severely dashed and buried in the ground. It’s a good job we don’t have windows in this office or I’d be tempted to set fire to the server and chuck them out of the window.

It’s been a long start to the new year.

 

Could not open key UNKNOWN\Components – fixed

When attempting to install Exchange 2007 sp2 on a server I was getting the error message Could not open Key UNKNOWN\Components\ 32 hex numbers \ another 32 hex numbers (see below)
Not so useful error message when trying to install Exchange 2007 sp2.
This turned out to be occurring when the Rollup 9 package was being uninstalled. Checking into the registry and hklm \software \ microsoft \ windows \ CurrentVersion \ Installer \ UserData \ S-1-5-18 \ Components \ numbers \ numbers. Taking ownership of the parent registry key and then assigning my admin user full rights to the parent and cascading permissions would allow the procedure to continue a little bit further. Eventually after a couple of attempts I expanded the Components key in regedit using ctrl + and then used the arrow key to move all the way through, fixing permissions as required.  The lazy way would have been to set permissions at the Components Key but that may cause other problems I didn’t really want to deal with in the future.

I have no idea why the permissions were so screwed up but I really do not appreciate wasting 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon trying to fix the issue – it took a while to debug the initial errors and then more time to run the install, find out it kept causing errors with different registry locations and then navigate through the entire component tree.

Dreamhost one click installs.

I don’t know if they’ve already had it but I noticed that Dreamhost now has an option in their one click installation routines that has a setting to email you whenever a new version comes out – this is great to ensure that you are aware of any new security patches. As they are one click installations it is very easy to upgrade the software but you do have to bear in mind that they may not have a new version as soon as it is released (although apparently their WordPress 2.5 came out hours after the official release).