I have a straightforward installation of SQL Server 2005 Express with a named instance (SENSE), and a single database (sense), on which I wish to perform an in-place upgrade to 2005 Standard Edition.
Running without command line parameters results in a warning on the pre-requisites check page saying that to perform an upgrade I need to start from the command line using SKUUPGRADE=1.
When I do this, the warning goes, and the upgrade check passes, but at no stage am I presented with the instance selection screen (which I would expect to be – the one where it asks if I want to create a new instance or upgrade an existing one), and subsequently the component selection screen is missing server components.
A modicum of googling suggests the following tact:
start /wait setup.exe ADDLOCAL=SQL_Engine INSTANCENAME=SENSE UPGRADE=SQL_Engine SKUUPGRADE=1 /qb
Which produces the error “The feature(s) specified are not valid for this edition of SQL Server” – and there I am stuck. Any great ideas, gentlemen? Thank you all.
The solution, as it turns out for anyone who should happen to google across this, is that Disc 1 of the SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition is client tools – this is why we werent seeing any option to install server elements. Disc two contains these. Problem solved.
Subsequently, it transpires that server 2005 (without service packs) does not play nice with systems featuring a number of processor cores that is not a power of two. The service just crashes. Because of this, prior to the installation it is necessary to force the CPU affinity to 1 using the boot options in msconfig, then apply the newest service pack, then restore the correct CPU count.