If you're installing SQL Server on your Vista Business/Enterprise or Ultimate machine chances are you do intend to use it for development purposes and obviously have already installed IIS. But chances are you might receive a warning message on the System Configuration Check page of the SQL Server 2005 Setup.

"Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) is either not installed or is disabled. IIS is required by some SQL Server features. Without IIS, some SQL Server features will not be available for installation. To install all SQL Server features, install IIS from Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel or enable the IIS service through the Control Panel if it is already installed, and then run SQL Server Setup again. For a list of features that depend on IIS, see Features Supported by Editions of SQL Server in Books Online."

Do not cancel setup to install the missing features in the hopes of re-installing SQL Server again. Cause I did and to find out that SQL Server (more particularly the database services) wouldn't install. You can simply install the required components without canceling the setup and resume it. I've tested that it works.

Let's first see what are the required IIS components that SQL Server depends upon. Well there's a KB article that has the official word on the components you'll need. If you prefer a more graphical illustration refer to the images below:

That's it, resume the setup. You'll notice that the setup again detects your IIS configuration and will continue and will finish without any problems. But what to do if you canceled the setup and ended up on this page via a search engine. Well the solution is fairly simple.

What happens in a re-installation attempt is that the setup determines that you already have SQL Native Client installed on your machine and doesn't extract the MSI package which unfortunately is a very-very important package. So to successfully re-install SQL Server 2005 you must uninstall all of the 4 entries you find in your Add/Remove Program Control Panel Applet bounded in the yellow rectangle in the image below.

Note that you may not have all four items on your list, the item just above the rectangle is of course not on your list as it didn't install successfully. Although you don't need to but I recommend reboot and when run the setup again you will be able to install SQL Server to seamlessly work with IIS.

Last night I when I reached home and switched on my machine it froze at the BIOS OEM Logo screen. I panicked but only for a second as it all seemed all too familiar to me. Recent memory of a post on Scott Hanselman's blog helped me fix the problem in under a minute. Turns out my brother had brought a Kingston DataTraveler 1GB USB disc of a friend from his MBA class. He told me he was unable to unplug it as Windows was reporting it as still being used and he forgot to take it out after he switched off the machine.

Although this hasn't happened when either of my Toshiba or Transcend USB drives are plugged in before boot. Had I not read  System won't pass the BIOS POST - Yank external USB drives on Scott Hanselman's blog a few months back, I probably had to waste a couple of frustrating hours before realizing that a simple thing as checking for any plugged external USB drive would have solved the problem pronto. Just wondering if anybody reading this post has ever had a similar experience, where you've benefited in such a way quite simply because you read about a similar experience on someone else's blog?

I've been reading about the whole VMware's attack on Microsoft's Virtualization strategy and its follow up stories. Having very little to do with hardcore system administration I am not at all qualified to comment on the issue/issues. But since Desktop Virtualization applications by both these companies have been available for free for quite sometime now, a thought ran through my mind. After all I live in a country where piracy is at a very high level. I guess such a thought would come to my mind more naturally than a guy in say - Dallas.

Let me make one thing very clear, I believe India would have not made such a stride had there not been an "unrestricted" access to software applications. In the good 'ol days before the Express editions how could any company expect that a person they're hiring in a Windows programming profile would have legally purchased his/her version of Visual Studio 6? OK so perhaps that's a bad analogy but what about during college? Well I think the reasons are too obvious that they don't warrant any explanations. However it is this natural access to virtually any software that has led a belief into the average consumers that they expect Windows & Office to be available to them for free. A large majority of people in India buy custom built PCs and their vendors don't even mention the word "piracy" to their customers, after all if you ask for 5,000 extra Rupees you risk losing the customer, as there is a custom PC shop in the next block who they can go to, to save money.

Anyways coming back to the though that ran through my mind, virtualization gives pirate users a chance to hide their acts behind layers of legal software, thereby giving them a safety blanket from getting caught more easily than before. Take this case for an example - Say a person has a legal copy of Windows, he also has a legal and free version of Virtual PC. The thought of erasing his tracks with the deletion of just one file would then encourage him to use a pirated copy of Photoshop CS in an environment where he was not able to do so before. Wouldn't it?