I am Googling this ridiculously annoying issue from past two days. And yet I am not able to find any answer. I have VM with Windows Server 2008 R2 and I want to install SQL Server 2008 R2 express. The pre-requisite for SQL Server 2008r2 Exp is to have windows installer 5. And I can't find it anywhere. Older versions of Windows Installers are not useful with this version. I found that there are so many posts about this issue and yet it seem to me that MSFT has not released WI 5 re-distributable packages.

I really doubt that anyone here has answer for me but still I hope that someone from MSFT can reply me. Thanks, Jack.

There is no redistributable for Windows Installer 5.0. It's part of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

So your Windows Server 2008 R2 machine should already have Windows Installer 5.0. If it doesn't have it, here are some possible causes: • it's Windows Server 2008 and not Windows Server 2008 R2 • the machine is corrupted somehow • the SQL installer you are using is broken What is the exact behavior you are encountering when installing SQL Server 2008 R2? Cosmin Pirvu Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help. Hi Jack, Windows Installer 5.0 is released with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7. Windows Installer 5 is not available as a standalone version and you can either or the. Samsung Sgh Software here.

The advantage of the web installer is you can choose to install any subset of the SDK. It however requires you to be connected to the internet. The ISO file is a complete package and it can even be installed on a computer not connected to the internet. Also hope these articles would help: Helen Zhou [MSFT] MSDN Community Support Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. @Cosmin It is Windows Server 2008 R2 Std edition (I got it from DreamSpark with my student login). I can try to re-create VM image again and check it. But i really doubt that it will solve the issue because I am using same VM image for other virtual machine as well of them are working just fine (I am using different virtual machines for SMTP server, WAMP server, DB server with SQL Server 2008r2 dev).