Renaming a Server Breaks SQL Server!

If you've not run across this one yet, you will one of these days. It's been around for a long time and is pretty easy to fix by rerunning Setup. How does your server get renamed?

• The obvious answer: you did it! You renamed the server.
• No so obvious: you installed SharePoint on a test server using local accounts and then decided to add Active Directory or join the server to a domain so you can play with all of the email features. (typical error code in the Event viewer is 17204)

Just Re-run Setup...

To fix it just rerun SQL Setup and let it repair the installation. But what about Microsoft Sql Server Embedded Edition (SSEE), the free, default and well hidden edition of SQL server that does not come with a setup program? Several Knowledgebase articles describe how to do this with a command line tool, but they never tell you enough. Here's one: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929665 They show you this line: Msiexec CALLERID=OCSetup.exe REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=omus /qn REBOOT=ReallySupress /l*v But they don't tell you the MSI_File_Name and it leaves out one switch. Here's one that worked for me: Msiexec /i "C:\Program Files\MSECache\wssv3\database\SSEE_10.msi" CALLERID=OCSetup.exe REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=omus /qn REBOOT=ReallySupress /l*v c:\log.txt Note: If you are doing this to fix a SharePoint problem remember to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard to let it fix the internal database names. Some notes on SSEE:

• Does not include any management tools, but you can connect to it using SQL Server Studio (regular or Express) with this "server name": \\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query
• It lives here: C:\WINDOWS\SYSMSI
• The databases are here by default: C:\WINDOWS\SYSMSI\SSEE\MSSQL.2005\MSSQL\Data