Hi Steve, good article you have here. Microsoft is making it so diffcult for a person to install SQL Server from 2005 upwards. I don't really know the older versions very well except for SQL 7 which I can't say I ever had difficulty installing for my clients. When SQL Server 2008 came out I upgraded a client (small system and database) to SQL Server Express. It took me close to 3 days to get it right and the server was bought new for this purpose. So, no previous installations that had to be upgraded only the database of which I copied the database files to the server from an old computer. I won't even talk about how long it took me to upgrade that. I read all the necessary documentation and eventually got a solution from another website than MS.