I currently ran into an interesting issue when installing MS SQL Server 2008. During the initial checks at startup of the installation process I got the following error: “Restart required”. So I restarted my computer but without success. I got exactly the same error message again.

I found out that this happens due to a wrong registry entry. In order to get the prerequisite-checks to succeed I had to delete the value of the following registry entry:

Today, I really struggled with MS SQL Server 2008 RC0. I tried to install it on my Microsoft Vista German box without any luck. During System Configuration Check it told me that the performance counter registry hive is corrupted. Looking at the detailed log I found this information:

Rule Name: PerfMonCounterNotCorruptedCheck Rule Description: Checks if existing performance counter registry hive is consistent. Message/Corrective Action: The performance counter registry hive is corrupted. To continue, you must repair the performance counter registry hive. For more information, see https://support.microsoft.com/kb/300956.

One thing that quite frequently happened to me: I worked with MS SQL Server Reporting Services for quite a while, due to some reason (that I cannot assign right now) while accessing the ReportManager I get the following error message “Failed to decrypt symmetric key”. The suggestion now is to run RsKeyMgmt to delete all encrypted content and to run RsConfig to re-generate a new key. However, when running RsKeyMgmt on my machine running a German version of Windows XP I get the following: After I type in J and click on ENTER nothing happens. It just doesn’t do anything. I googled for solutions but just couldn’t find anything. The only way to get RS back to work was to reinstall it. This happened quite a few times to me until I found this post (original link: https://www.developmentnow.com/g/115_2005_1_0_0_454625/rskeymgmt-gives-no-response.htm) from Brian Welcker. So, the simple solution to this is to type in Y instead.