SQL SERVER – Installation Error – The Specified Driver is Invalid

In this blog post we are going to learn about Installation Error – The Specified Driver is Invalid.

SYMPTOMS

SQL Server installation failed with errors in setup logs. Summary.txt shows below

Troubleshooting information for those features:
Next step for SQLEngine: Use the following information to resolve the error, uninstall this feature, and then run the setup process again.
Next step for FullText: Use the following information to resolve the error, uninstall this feature, and then run the setup process again.
Next step for Replication: Use the following information to resolve the error, uninstall this feature, and then run the setup process again.

Above means that we need to:

1. Find cause and resolved the error.
2. Uninstall SQL Server.
3. Run setup process again to install SQL Server.

Fine, now let’s look further down to know what was the cause of those three components install failure.

Feature: Database Engine Services
Status: Failed: see logs for details
Reason for failure: An error occurred during the setup process of the feature.
Next Step: Use the following information to resolve the error, uninstall this feature, and then run the setup process again.
Component name: SQL Server Database Engine Services Instance Features
Component error code: 0x84BB0001
Error description: The specified driver is invalid.

This tells us that the error is “The specified driver is invalid.” I found below KB

(Issues that you may encounter when you install a named instance of one or more SQL Server 2005 components and you specify different installation locations for one or more of the components)

But above is not applicable because we are install SQL 2012 not SQL 2005. As per books online documentation, I looked further into Detail.txt

lodctr: ‘E:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL11.SQLCAPMSSQLBinnperf-MSSQL$SQLCAPsqlctr.ini’

(01) 2017-01-11 11:06:49 Slp: PerfCounter calling lodctr: ‘E:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL 
ServerMSSQL11.SQLCAPMSSQLBinnperf-MSSQL$SQLCAPsqlctr.ini’

This failed with exact same error.When I opened below files, they were having some unreadable characters.

• E:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL11.SQLCAPMSSQLBinnsqlctr.ini’
• E:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL11.SQLCAPMSSQLBinnperf-MSSQL$SQLCAPsqlctr.ini’

When I checked from my laptop’s SQL instance, it was clearly readable. The path would vary based on instance name.

WORKAROUND/SOLUTION

We tried using the same media on another machine and it failed with the same error. I asked them to re-download the media as it looks like setup media is corrupted. After re-downloading media and we could install SQL Server on this machine.

Reference:Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)

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