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Post was rewritten after additional investigation. The error message was:

Installation of this product failed because it is not supported on this operating system. For information on supported configurations, see the product documentation.

The installation target is a Hyper-V guest machine as follows: 2G RAM, 14.5 GB free on the C: drive, 2.5 GHz CPU. .NET 3.5 is turned on.

On this page https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42299 the following note was confusing to me (bold is my emphasis):

Note: Microsoft® SQL Server® 2014 Express includes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. SQLEXPR32_x86 is a smaller package that can be used to install SQL Server 2014 Express onto only 32-bit operating systems. SQLEXPR_x86 is the same product but supports installation onto both 32-bit and 64-bit (WoW) operating systems. SQLEXPR_x64 is a native 64-bit SQL Server 2014 Express and supports installation onto only 64-bit operating systems. There is no other difference between these packages. Microsoft® SQL Server® 2014 Express is not supported on IA64 systems.

The wording seemed to indicate the x86.exe would work on both 32/64 bit systems which was consistent with my findings. But I thought that also indicated the 32bit.msi would also work on both 32/64 bit systems. I am beginning to believe I misunderstood and would appreciate confirmation the error is my reading of the note.

Joel Coehoorn
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Alan
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3 Answers3

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Your error message answers your question. Your trying to install it on an unsupported OS. Check out https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143506(v=sql.120).aspx which lists the requirements. It appears that in a Hyper-V Environment all versions of SQL 2014 are only supported on a Windows 2008 SP2. 2008 R2 SP1, or 2012 OS.

Matthew Verstraete
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  • Thanks Matthew, but before I mark this as the answer, see my note above (Which I was posting while you were posting :-)). I looked at the link and read it, yet I successfully installed SQL 2014 on my guest, so now I'm really confused. Not sure where to turn. – Alan Dec 30 '15 at 22:28
  • I'm wondering if the virtualization requirement you referenced is for the Hyper-V host. I.E., Hyper-V can be hosted on a Win 8/10 OS and while it works on those OS's, it's not as predictable as when running on a Server, hence the limitation you found. But I would expect the guest machines to operate normally and accept SQL as my subsequent test mentioned above indicates. – Alan Dec 30 '15 at 22:37
  • @Alan After seeing your edit and re-reading the page I think you are right. There should be no differences between the MSI and EXE installs as they are just different install wizards (EXE is sometimes a bootstrap for MSI). Unfortunately I don't have a Hyper-V setup so I can't test out your findings. – Matthew Verstraete Dec 31 '15 at 13:46
  • I was able to integrate the 64bitLocalDB.msi into my setup.exe and it did successfully install on the VM. Empirically that suggests I just didn't understand the notes by Microsoft. I won't update this post with an answer until I confirm this - while it probably won't be many, I'm sure there are others who have experienced this problem. In the end I don't think it's the VM, it's the 32/64 bit issue. Thanks for your comments. – Alan Dec 31 '15 at 17:52
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My particular problem was the misunderstanding that the 32 bit MSI would work on a 64 bit OS. Once I changed to the 64 bit MSI SQL Express 2014 loaded just fine into the VM. The 32 bit x86 .exe setup file did in fact work on the 64 bit OS, just not the MSI setup file.

Alan
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Note there are two different _x86 file names: SQLEXPR32_x86 only works on 32-bit systems. SQLEXPR_x86 (note the missing "32") will work on both 64-bit and 32-bit systems, but still runs as a 32-bit process.

Joel Coehoorn
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