Problems with the installation of SQL Server 2014 (after the Windows 8.1 Update)

I’m not sure if this have something to do with the Windows 8.1 Update but the reality is that I wasn’t able to install SQL Server 2014 on my machine after the Windows 8.1 Update.

The SQL Server 2014 installer finished with the error message “Could not find the Database Engine startup handle”. The consequence, couple of services with the status failed, wasn’t installed:

• Reporting Services – Native
• Database Engine Services
• Data Quality Service
• Full-Text and Semantic Extractions for Search
• SQL Service Replication

You can see the installation log below.

Feature:                       Reporting Services - Native
  Status:                        Failed: see logs for details
  Reason for failure:            An error occurred for a dependency of the feature causing the setup process for the feature to fail.
  Next Step:                     Use the following information to resolve the error, uninstall this feature, and then run the setup process again.
  Component name:                SQL Server Database Engine Services Instance Features
  Component error code:          0x851A0019
  Error description:             Could not find the Database Engine startup handle.
  Error help link:               http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkId=20476&ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&EvtSrc=setup.rll&EvtID=50000&ProdVer=12.0.2000.8&EvtType=0xD15B4EB2%400x4BDAF9BA%401306%4025&EvtType=0xD15B4EB2%400x4BDAF9BA%401306%4025

  Feature:                       Database Engine Services
  Status:                        Failed: see logs for details
  Reason for failure:            An error occurred during the setup process of the feature.
  Next Step:                     Use the following information to resolve the error, uninstall this feature, and then run the setup process again.
  Component name:                SQL Server Database Engine Services Instance Features
  Component error code:          0x851A0019
  Error description:             Could not find the Database Engine startup handle.
  Error help link:               http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkId=20476&ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&EvtSrc=setup.rll&EvtID=50000&ProdVer=12.0.2000.8&EvtType=0xD15B4EB2%400x4BDAF9BA%401306%4025&EvtType=0xD15B4EB2%400x4BDAF9BA%401306%4025

  Feature:                       Data Quality Services
  Status:                        Failed: see logs for details
  Reason for failure:            An error occurred for a dependency of the feature causing the setup process for the feature to fail.
  Next Step:                     Use the following information to resolve the error, uninstall this feature, and then run the setup process again.
  Component name:                SQL Server Database Engine Services Instance Features
  Component error code:          0x851A0019
  Error description:             Could not find the Database Engine startup handle.
  Error help link:               http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkId=20476&ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&EvtSrc=setup.rll&EvtID=50000&ProdVer=12.0.2000.8&EvtType=0xD15B4EB2%400x4BDAF9BA%401306%4025&EvtType=0xD15B4EB2%400x4BDAF9BA%401306%4025

  Feature:                       Full-Text and Semantic Extractions for Search
  Status:                        Failed: see logs for details
  Reason for failure:            An error occurred for a dependency of the feature causing the setup process for the feature to fail.
  Next Step:                     Use the following information to resolve the error, uninstall this feature, and then run the setup process again.
  Component name:                SQL Server Database Engine Services Instance Features
  Component error code:          0x851A0019
  Error description:             Could not find the Database Engine startup handle.
  Error help link:               http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkId=20476&ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&EvtSrc=setup.rll&EvtID=50000&ProdVer=12.0.2000.8&EvtType=0xD15B4EB2%400x4BDAF9BA%401306%4025&EvtType=0xD15B4EB2%400x4BDAF9BA%401306%4025

  Feature:                       SQL Server Replication
  Status:                        Failed: see logs for details
  Reason for failure:            An error occurred for a dependency of the feature causing the setup process for the feature to fail.
  Next Step:                     Use the following information to resolve the error, uninstall this feature, and then run the setup process again.
  Component name:                SQL Server Database Engine Services Instance Features
  Component error code:          0x851A0019
  Error description:             Could not find the Database Engine startup handle.
  Error help link:               http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkId=20476&ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&EvtSrc=setup.rll&EvtID=50000&ProdVer=12.0.2000.8&EvtType=0xD15B4EB2%400x4BDAF9BA%401306%4025&EvtType=0xD15B4EB2%400x4BDAF9BA%401306%4025

The database engine wasn’t even able to start and the SQL service sqlservr.exe timed out. I looked into the service Dump Directory for the error log.

What I found was this:

2014-04-04 14:00:34.43 spid15s     Initializing the FallBack certificate failed with error code: 1, state: 20, error number: 0.
2014-04-04 14:00:34.43 spid15s     Unable to initialize SSL encryption because a valid certificate could not be found, and it is not possible to create a self-signed certificate.
2014-04-04 14:00:34.43 spid15s     Error: 17182, Severity: 16, State: 1.
2014-04-04 14:00:34.43 spid15s     TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0x80092004, status code 0x80. Reason: Unable to initialize SSL support. Cannot find object or property. 
2014-04-04 14:00:34.44 spid15s     Error: 17182, Severity: 16, State: 1.
2014-04-04 14:00:34.44 spid15s     TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0x80092004, status code 0x1. Reason: Initialization failed with an infrastructure error. Check for previous errors. Cannot find object or property. 
2014-04-04 14:00:34.44 spid15s     Error: 17826, Severity: 18, State: 3.
2014-04-04 14:00:34.44 spid15s     Could not start the network library because of an internal error in the network library. To determine the cause, review the errors immediately preceding this one in the error log.
2014-04-04 14:00:34.44 spid15s     Error: 17120, Severity: 16, State: 1.
2014-04-04 14:00:34.44 spid15s     SQL Server could not spawn FRunCommunicationsManager thread. Check the SQL Server error log and the Windows event logs for information about possible related problems.

Still I didn’t knew anything more. Ok my first approach was to googling around.

Here are couple of suggestions I found:

• Check the CHECKSUM of ISO file
• Extract the ISO file instead to mount them
• Use other service accounts for the services
• Delete the user profile if it existing twice

Some people have suggested, as mentioned above, as a  workaround to choose NETWORK or LOCAL SERVICE instead of SQL Server virtual accounts which are proposed by installer. That was idea, but instead to start the installation once again I tried this on the already installed SQL Service Instance and voila, the service which timed out before, started now.

For me wasn’t this an option as I want the perfect clean installation with the issue to be resolved. If you want to go this way you will find more information about the configuration of Window Accounts and Services for SQL Server here.

What I thinking was that it has something to do with the permissions. Karthick’s blog gave me the idea to look into the SQL Server Database Engine Account Profile Path (to see if the Crypto folder exists), which should in my case be stored under the c:\Users\MSSQL$SQLSERVER2014 . But there were not any directories which could be belonged to the SQL Server 2014 installation. Hm. That is definitely strange, and for sure, the source of pain, I believed. So my suggestion was that something went wrong with my account and so I created new account just only for the installation purposes.

I created new user Install and assigned them to the Administrators group. I logged out and want to log in but this is what I got:

“The User Profile Service service failed the sign-in. User profile cannot be loaded.” Ouch. Short check, but User Profile Service ran. What the hell… Ok googling again and found this.

“The gist of it is like this – user profile is created when the user first tries to log on. During this process profile data is copied from the default profile. If file permissions are messed up then this process will fail. The solution is to propagate permissions from default user folder to all it’s subfolders and files.”

So I navigate to the c:\Users, right click on the folder Default (which is hidden per default), Properties, Security Tab, Advance, Change Permissions and checked “Replace all child object permissions entries with the inheritable permissions entries from this object”.

After Apply, I was able to install SQL Server 2014 from my own user account without any issues.