SQL Server 2008 Web Edition and Express Edition Errors Resolved

Since I had purchased the SQL Server 2008 Web Edition for my database server, I decided to also install it on my development box. But when I tried to install the Management Tools, it errored with:

"Previous release of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008."

I click the "failed" link and it complained...

"Upgrade MS Visual Studio 2008 to the SP1 before installing sql server 2008."

I researched this error and was told this occurs if you had a previous beta version of Visual Studio 2008 and that you also needed SP1. Well, I had never used a beta version of VS2008 and I had SP1 installed, so that couldn't be the problem.

So I uninstalled the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition that came with my Visual Studio 2008.

I then installed SQL Server 2008 Web Edition and all was well... yay! One problem fixed.

Fixed until I needed to create an express MDF database or work with an existing one. So I installed the SQL Server 2008 Express Edition database and when I clicked the App_Data directory to add a new SQL Server database, I received the error:

"failed to generate a user instance of sql server due to a failure in starting the process"

Googling the phrase (and don't you love Google's intellisense in their search box that finishes your typing for you?!) brings up 15,200 results, with many, many potential solutions. Even the potential solutions have more potential solutions in the user comments. "I did this..." but "that didn't work for me, so I did this..." and so on.

So I decided to hopefully restrict it to the 2008 version by adding 2008 to the front of the error message. Fortunately, I landed on this blog post first:

Errror Message : Failed to generate a user instance of SQL Server due to a failure in starting the process for the user instance

The author, (and why is it so hard to find author's names on their blogs!!!), says to delete this directory:

1) C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server Data\SQLEXPRESS
 
2) and reboot your computer.

Did it work for me? Yes!

I hope sharing this find with you is helpful. I muddled through a lot of "solutions...." some that were pages long, involved permissions, authorities, command line changes, and who knows what else. I didn't try any of them. I wanted to try something simple first. This was very simple and voila!

May your dreams be in ASP.NET and your SQL Servers run smoothly!

Nannette Thacker

 

 

2 Comments

  • That post made my day... thank you very much Nanette!

  • Thanks for the posting, I've been going crazy like you were for many days now, but even still couldn't get past that message. Something in your post triggered the solution for me so I wanted to share.

    Before I installed VS 2008 (and SP1) I was using the EXPRESS versions of VWD and VB.NET 2008. You have to also uninstall those versions if they are not SP1 or you will get the same message. They shouldn't have been around since I would be using VS now, but I didn't worry about removing.

    Just hopefully helps someone else.

Comments have been disabled for this content.