Difficult installation of SQL Express

[Gloops]

Hello everybody,

Last year, SQL Express 2017 installed easily and I thought it ran well since then.

Nevertheless, since a problem with "automatic instance" raised the alert that my disk had problems, that were solved with CHKDSK /R /F until I compare free and charged tools for disk management, it seemed the installation lacked cleanliness: the same instance appeared three times under two names in SSMS, the Polybase service failed to open and I was answered (to simplify) that this has nothing to do there ...

So, I began to re-install ...

Here is the situation : most of the SQL entries in the applications list have been uninstalled (there are still the drivers yet), the discovery report of SQL Server 2017 installation tells that nothing more is installed, but in the applications list, in Windows 10 parameters, there is still "Microsoft SQL Server 2017 (64 bits)", and it appears reluctant to be uninstalled.

The instances have been uninstalled, but when it comes to uninstall the distributable functionalities, a message tells that no SQL Server 2017 functionality is valid for this operation.

There are two meanings for this expression: either there is no distributable functionality that is installed, and thus there is none to uninstall. Or, it means that the code to uninstall the "redistributable functionalities" package is missing.
The first meaning would be more simple, but then I should expect to go the next operation (or end of treatment) when clicking on the "next" button. But instead, it stays blocked with the error message I said.

I had the idea that perhaps repair before uninstall could be good, to take my second hypothesis into account, but then I got error 0x84B30002.

The next idea I get is to search by Windows whether there is a forced uninstall functionality, but it is not necessarily the best idea, except if it is the only one.

Any other idea?

 

[Skydiver]

If you go with the forced uninstall route, msizap will be your friend. Beware that msizap will only uninstall stuff that is specified within the .MSI itself. My understanding is that SQL Server does a bunch of other configuration/install steps after first run. You might need to search on Google for how to do a manual clean uninstall of SQL Server.

 

[Gloops]

Hello,

I fear so, I had a good surprise about the time needed to save the databases, but then it can be needed now.

From what I understand, there is a difficulty with msizap, it is that SQL Server installs several tools one after the other, and it is not necessarily obvious which one would be uninstalled -although there is not a lot of room now to uninstall something else.

I was not very careful: I could have run Revo Uninstaller, but do it at the end has risks to be much less useful, as it begins by taking note of what to uninstall, while the software and its references are still in place.

Some other tools exist, I know much less about.

 

[Gloops]

I did not uninstall the install program, as I intend to reinstall.
This can be a point of attention when using msizap.
On another side, I saw it seemed very quick to uncompress, as opposed to previous versions. Oh, perhaps because it was already done?
There is also the possibility to do a backup of it.

 

[Gloops]

I have a backup of the image of the disks.
I wonder whether this can help, without having a second set of disks to work on ...
I saw there is a possibility to "start from" the image, but if Revo Uninstaller has to take notes, I fear it has to be on the image.