SQL2008 so corrupt you cant uninstall or repair it?!

[Rawns]

A school had a power failure last night and since then SQL2008 Express just will not work. I decided to go down the repair route and it saying that various setup files are missing, then the installer crashes out!

 

I then tried the complete uninstall/reinstall route but cannot uninstall it either! Same issue, it gets so far then starts then throws out an error about the "request control not being valid for this service" - goes a bit further then throws out a SQL Server 2008 Setup has encountered an error" message and closes down.

 

So, to summarise, I cant repair it and I cant uninstall it. The school are left without SIMSand FMS ad I'm left pulling my hair out as I cannot sort it! Any advice about fixing this would be appreciated!

[MaXiM]

I've had a similar problem with trying to install SQL 2008 on client computers. I used the Microsoft Uninstaller cleanup utility and removed all SQL refs from there.. I'm not sure about it on a server though..

But it worked for me on a client situation.

Also I think I removed the .net framework stuff and reinstalled that as well.

[theriver]

Hi.

 

I have also had success removing damaged SQL (2005) instances using the uninstalled utility, though it really is a last resort!

 

MS have an article which has some info on manually uninstalling SQL 2008:

 

SQL Server 2008 installation fails when you try to install SQL Server a second time

 

. . . which may help.