Senseless Microsoft

My boss wants me to upgrade our production database server from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005. We have been running SQL Server 2005 on our development database server for sometime and need to move a new product from development to production. We purchased the software. Now, on the CD is a little utility called the SQL Server Upgrade Advisor. This utility examines the SQL Server 2000 database configurations and advises you of any pitfalls that you may encounter in the upgrade. Being diligent, I decide to run the Advisor.

Well, the Advisor requires that the .NET Framework 2.0 be installed on the machine which I didn't have installed. So, I went to the MS Site, downloaded and installed the Framework. The Advisor ran. As expected, the Advisor turned up no specific issues. Of course, being Microsoft, we did get a generic warning that pretty much stated that the Advisor doesn't look at absolutely everything and a clean bill of health from the Advisor in no way guarantees there will be no issues in the upgrade and if you happen to get an issue, then you can't hold MS responsible, etc....

I decide to go ahead and do my install. I click the button to install the server and almost immediately I get an error:

Error: SQL Server 2005 Setup has detected incompatible components from beta versions of Visual Studio, .NET Framework, or SQL Server 2005. Use Add or Remove Programs to remove these components, and then run SQL Server 2005 Setup again. For detailed instructions on uninstalling SQL Server 2005, see the SQL Server 2005 Readme.

Well, this server has never had the BETA versions of anything on it. It is our production DB server and we don't do BETA software on production servers. But I did just install the .NET Framework to run the Advisor, but that really can't be it because SQL Server 2005 requires the .NET Framework to run as well. I check a few things out. Google. MS Knowledge Base. Nothing really crops up that meets my "smell" test for why this is happening.

Well, I finally decide that even thought SQL Server 2005 requires the .NET Framework, I will uninstall it and see if my error message goes away. The worst that can happen is that the install software will tell me it is required and ask me to reinstall it. I uninstall the .NET Framework that I just installed to run the Advisor that is not a BETA version and, lo and behold, my install of SQL Server will now progress and it tells me that:

SQL Server Component Update will install the following components required for SQL Server Setup:

.NET Framework 2.0
Microsoft SQL Native Client
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Setup Support Files

So...the .NET Framework 2.0 is on the CD, but the Advisor won't install it as part of its setup. You have to download it. But the downloaded .NET Framework is incompatible with the install of the actual server. This doesn't make an sense, why do I have to install something to use the Advisor only to have to uninstall it to use the actual product?