Installing SQL Server 2017 on Windows 10

Installing SQL Server Database Engine 2017 together with other major versions can give an error like this:


The entire installation will fail, and looking into the summary log file reveils an issue installing Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable. This is thoroughly described in a StackExchange question (link), but the solution details differ in various situations according to the comments. The solution given in the Microsoft CSS SQL Server Engineers blog entry (link) gives another solution on repairing the Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable that did not work in my case as the component was not installed.

The existing Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable was version 14.16.27012.6 where the link in the StackOverflow answer goes to 14.11.25325.0. The latest version can be found through the support article 2977003 (link). Today the given version is 14.16.27027.1. The version is shown in the file details:


The name of the installation file is always "VC_redist.x64.exe".

After removing the two Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable installations the SQL Server installation completes with success - partly.

I am actually not using the failed components, but this will be fixed later in this text with a update.

After the SQL Server 2017 installation Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable is on the computer in both x86 and x64.
Installing Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable requires a computer restart on both x64 and x86 installations. This gives two restarts.

After all this SQL Server 2017 runs nice.

And then the latest CU can be installed. I notice that the CU installation also updates the two shared features that failed in the SQL Server 2017 installation above.


The update completes with success. Please notice that a final reboot is required as mentioned in the summary log file:
Instance SSDB2017 overall summary:
  Final result:                  Passed but reboot required, see logs for details
  Exit code (Decimal):           3010
...
This is not raised in the GUI.

Windows 10 on ThinkPad T440s

The other day I wanted to install Windows 10 on a Lenovo ThinkPad T440s.
It seemed like a simple task:

1. Download Windows 10 image from Visual Studio subscription.
2. Extract installation files to USB stick.
3. Boot ThinkPad on USB stick.
4. Install Windows 10.

Not quite.
The installation set is not specially large and fits easily on a medium (8 GiB) USB stick.
But the file "install.wim" is larger than 4 GiB in the latest Windows 10 image. And when a USB usually is formatted with FAT32, it can't hold a file larger than 4 GiB.
My first thought was to format the USB stick with exFAT, but the T440s couldn't boot on the USB stick with the installed BIOS level.

My solution was:

1. Format the USB stick with FAT32.
2. Download the RTM image of Windows 10 where the file "install.wim" is smaller than 4 GiB.
3. Extract installation files to the USB stick.
4. Boot the ThinkPad on the USB stick.
5. Install Windows 10 RTM.
6. Update Windows 10 to current release - with several reboots.

How to install Windows 10 later when RTM is not available on Visual Studio subscription might be a larger challenge in the future.
If I meet that challenge then I will update this post.