SQL Server 2008 Installation Problem

I'm blogging this in the hope that it might help someone else who's struggling with an install...

I had my laptop rebuilt last Friday, so I've spent the last two days at InstallFest :-) (I would have done most of my installing over the weekend but due to a slight oversight IT forgot to make my account an Administrator so all I could was download installers).

I started installing SQL Server 2008 Developer last night at home, but hit a problem with it. I tried again and got the same error, the exact text of which I'm repeating here in case someone Googles for it:

"Wait on the Database Engine recovery handle failed"

I put it down to a flaky connection to our VPN (a reasonable guess since our VPN has been playing up for me for a few weeks, although I think me and IT solved this between us this afternoon), so I tried again this morning in the office. Same result.

I Googled the error and found KB960781 which has the exact error message, but applies to upgrading SQL to SQL 2008 where the sa account has been renamed. As I was doing a clean install, this wasn't likely to be my culprit.

However, my fourth install attempt succeeded! What changed? I'd been configuring the SQL services to run under the Network Service account, but for this install I changed the account to the local System account. I'm guessing I could now change this back to Network Service, but I'd rather not chance it. What was the underlying issue? Frankly, I've no idea - my working theory is that there are some permissions missing from my Network Service account.

SQLExpress and Compressed Files

Another of those things I'm blogging for future reference...

A little while ago I ran the Windows Disk Cleanup utility to recover some space on my hard drive. One of the things it did was go through my filesystem and compress files that I hadn't used in a little while.

I went back to some of those files yesterday - a WinForms project that I started ages ago that uses a SQL Express database - but when I tried to run the project I got strange errors in my DAL. I fired up SQL Management Studio and attached to my SQL Express instance, where things got even stranger. I had two databases showing, one with the path to my database and one with just the name of the database, but no plus sign next to them to expand them. Couldn't detach them, couldn't delete them. I did a bit of Googling and I saw a comment that SQL Express doesn't work with compressed files. Almost instantly I figured out what had happened - I uncompressed all the files in the folder and everything started behaving itself again.

Blue Screen: SQL Server Management Studio vs Intellipoint 6.2

I've been randomly getting the Blue Screen of Death when using SQL Server Management Studio 2005, mostly when either scrolling across an open table or resizing a column. It did it again today and I'd had enough.

A bit of Googling suggests that the problem is between Management Studio and Intellipoint. I started hunting through Microsoft's support pages looking for someone to pin this on but it seems the SQL Server team are aware of this but said they aren't going to fix it (though this report is marked as Active at time of writing). Anyway I ended up on the Hardware Support pages where I discovered that I get two free support calls with my Wireless Presenter Mouse. So I've logged the problem with them but with the Intellipoint team, not the SQL Server team. Hopefully the Intellipoint team can either come up with a hotfix or alternatively make the SQL Server team come up with a hotfix. Either way I'm hoping we can get a permanent resolution to the problem.

Update: I've had a first contact from Microsoft. Didn't get to talk to them as I'd already left for the day but I'm hopeful this means they've accepted the issue!
Update 2: Looks like my contact at Microsoft is now trying to pass this off to the Windows team.