Thursday, November 12, 2015

Installing SQL Server && .NET 3.5 on Windows 10

Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2015 by
Recently at work, I upgraded to Windows 10. Obviously, I needed SQL Server. Interestingly all versions I tried (2012, 2014, and 2016) are dependent on .NET 3.5. Even more interestingly, Windows 8 and Windows 10 do not come stock with .NET 3.5.

Anytime I tried to install SQL server, I would get a missing .NET 3.5 error.

When I try to install .NET 3.5 I had the following error: 0x800f081f missing source files.

I tried this and it failed, many times:
  1. Open a command prompt with administrator user rights (Run as Administrator) in DOS BOX type gpedit.msc
  2. Local Computer Policy -> Admin Templates -> System -> Specify settings for Optional Component install and component repair (way near the bottom of the right frame)
  3. Check the “Contact Windows Update Directly” box and set policy to Enabled.
  4. Close gpedit
  5. *Try this: Type in the dos box: DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:NetFx3 /All
  6. Or check in Control Panel and you can now check the .net 3.5 box and it should download
(I also tried using a USB drive with the source files and that failed.)

What did work for me:
  1. On this page (note screenshot above with photo): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10, hit Download Media Creation Tool.
  2. On my Windows 10 laptop, I opened this file, made a .ISO of my windows 10.
  3. I mounted said .ISO onto the E: drive (right click .ISO and click Mount).
  4. I ran command prompt as an admin.
  5. Then I ran this in command prompt (Replace E with whatever your mounted drive for Windows ends up being).
DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:NetFx3 /Source:E:\sources\sxs /All /LimitAccess

.. and it made me restart. And then it appeared to work. For some reason having it mounted locally worked.

On top of this, I was installing SQL Server 2014 and ran into another snag. I got stuck on Install watsonx86_cpu32_action, for a long long time.. suspected somethng was wrong and read a website here. Based on the suggestions, I went into Task Manager and had to End Task on some Windows Installer processed under the Background Processes.. and then it caused it to get past the watson freeze.