You come to work and set your mind to start installing your new SQL 2005 64-bit cluster. You’ve prepared your servers with the installation of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition 64-bit, created all the right users and groups, all the IP addresses are available and all the needed disks are already created. There is a little more to it like names for virtual servers but that’s outside of the scope of this article.
Recently I was asked to create a new high-availability solution for MS SQL Server 2005. When I finished the installation of SQL Server 2005, I found myself troubled as to why the installation of SP3 failed with the update of the database services. After a lot of searching, I found the solution to my problem.
Because I spend a lot of time figuring out why my installation failed I decided to write this article so other people won’t have to spend so much time and frustration installing the service pack. This article also covers the problem with Service Pack 2. I haven’t tested Service Pack 1 with this method.