Failure installing SQL Server Express on a Pentium M device

I am currently trying to track down why one of our users is getting an error attempting to install SQL Server Express on their machine.

The symptoms are that SQL Server Express warns about the minimum hardware requirement not being met, the installation proceeds, but is not able to start the SQL Server service, and fails with the following error in the SQLSetupXXXX_MACHINENAME_Core(local).log file.

Error: Action "ReportChainingResults" threw an exception during execution.
One or more packages failed to install. Refer to logs for error details. : 1067
Error Code: 0x8007042b (1067)
Windows Error Text: The process terminated unexpectedly.

Source File Name: sqlchaining\sqlchainingactions.cpp
Compiler Timestamp: Thu Sep 1 22:23:05 2005
Function Name: sqls::ReportChainingResults::perform
Source Line Number: 3097

From all the information I can gather, this error occurs when the processor does NOT support cache prefetching, such as a Pentium II or a dubious Pentium III compatible CPU. I would have thought that Pentium M CPU's would all support cache prefetching, I am developing on a Pentium M CPU myself with NO dramas.

The CPU we are having problems with is a low-end one, Pentium M 1.4GHz, and it is an Advent laptop. Does anyone know why we would be seeing this error on this machine? Is there a way of turning cache prefetching off say in the BIOS, and would a non-technical user be likely to do that (say for preserving battery life or something like that)? Or is there another reason why SQl Server is not installing?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Interesting thing happened today with respects to this problem.

We were originally starting an install of SQL Server Express as a pre-requisite to an InstallShield installer that installs our main application. This works fine on all the machines we've tested on.

Today I was able to successfully step our client (the one with the Pentium M on an Advent Laptop mentioned in the previous post), through downloading the SQL Express installer from the MS website, and then installing it manually (creating our specific instance, and using our particular settings etc...), and this worked fine. The user was then able to install our main application and run it successfully.

I don't understand why we got the above error (which from all I can tell is to do with cache pre-fetching), when installing it from our installer, but was able to install successfully by downloading it from MS.

Any thoughts?

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The core log file is really just a log of the master setup and doesn't contain specific details about why a sub-product failed. If you see an error again, you should look at the file %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\Log\summary.txt. It should give a quick summary of the install and be able to point you to the detailed log file for further information. If you then open the detailed log file, typically you can find the error by searching for the string "value 3" and then examining the 20 or so lines above and below the location that you found. Sometimes it will be an error executing a script or launching SQL Server, so you might also want to look at the ERRORLOG in %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\LOG\ERRORLOG. (MSSQL.1 might actually have some other number on the end, it depends on how many instances of SQL you have installed).

-Jeffrey.

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Thanks for the information Jeffrey, I'll go back and look through all the log files.

Cheers.

|||Scott,

Am I to understand from your post that you found a way to install SQL Express 2005 on a machine that does not support certain PIII features? I am desperately hoping to get it running on a Pentium II machine.

Thanks,

Zach First
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No Zach, the Pentium M is a Pentium 4 based processor, which is why I was so dismayed that I was getting the same error messages as we had seen when tracking down another clients install problem which ended up being a Pentium III compatibility issue. What Jeffrey was telling me is that I just wasn't looking at the error logs in enough detail. To be honest I still haven't found the reason why the first few attempts to install SQL Express on a pentium M machine didn't work, and with limited time and resources have moved onto other issues.

I would suggest that you give up any hope of trying to get SQL Express (or any SKU of SQL Server 2005) running on a pentium II device, The minimum hardware requirement is a pentium III for a number of reasons, one of which is cache prefetching, and without the instruction set to support it SQL Server 2005 WILL NOT RUN.

Sorry for the bad news.