About Me

Colorado
Paul has 18 years experience with Microsoft SQL Server. He has worked in the roles of production DBA, database developer, database architect, applications developer, business intelligence and data warehouse developer, and instructor for students aspiring for MCDBA certification. He has performed numerous data migrations and supported large databases (3 Terabyte, 1+ billion rows) with high transactions. He is a member of PASS, blogs about lessons learned from a developer’s approach to SQL Server administration, and has been the president of the Boulder SQL Server Users’ Group for 11 years, from January 2009 to 2020.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

SQL 2012 Installation Error









I encountered this error while installing SQL 2012.  What is puzzling is that I was using a fully licensed copy that I had downloaded from Microsoft using my BizSpark account.  I encountered this error for both Developer and Enterprise editions.


SQL Server Setup has encountered the following error:

The SQL Server product key is not valid.  To proceed, re-enter the product key values from the Certificate of Authenticity (COA) or SQL Server packaging.

Error code 0x858C0017.

I was installing SQL 2012 onto a virtual machine (in my case, using Virtual Box from Oracle Corporation).  The setup file for SQL was located on my host machine, but the VM had access to that folder. 

This had me perplexed for days.  Finally I solved the problem by copying the whole install image onto the VM.  Once setup accessed the files locally to the VM rather than from the host, I was able to install without any problem.