I found a real strange problem a couple of days ago. I was building a set of standalone/workgroup VMs (mainly for playing with Biztalk 04 and 06 . I tried TFS, but its a monster to install and i gave up halfway).
I first had an existing SQL2000 VM that didnt have any SPs on it and i connected up and tried to patch it with SP3a. But SP3a just hung at the validating user stage. I then built a new XPSP2 VM and tried to install SQL. This time it got to the ‘configuring the server ‘ stage and hung. I even left it overnight, but it didnt complete. This happened when i used the ‘local system account’ to configure the services. I tried using the Administrator account and it said that it could not validate the account. I took a copy of the old SQL VM and decided to apply old SPs one after the other. I got as far as SP1 but SP2 timed out (the SCM couldnt start the service and it gave me an error code number 1460).
Left me stumped for a while since i had successfully created VMs of Win2003 in this way (and even got Biztalk 04 to install correctly the very first time on a Win2003 box) – so it was crazy that good ol SQLServer should be giving probs.
Finally I found an article that states you cannot install MSDE or SQL on XP via remote desktop. You need a local session. In my case, since i was using Virtual Server, it meant i had to use the browser based window of the target machine and perform the installation instead of enabling remote access and RDPing to the IP address. This worked like a charm. I now have the boxes all built and ready.
Curious eh ? Does anyone know why this happens?