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Upgrade to PureMessage 3.1 - SQL Express service pack issue

Chunk

Hi all,

so my current setup is this:

Server 2003/Exchange 2003 - Pure Message 3.0.2.0 SQL Express 2005 SP2

I need to upgrade to PureMessage 3.1 before the end of the month and I have reviewed the system requirements that say I need SQL Express 2005 SP3. Any guidance on how I upgrade from SP2 to SP3?

Spoke to support and they said that the PM installer would not do this for me so I need to do it myself but could offer no guidance. Basically I have so far downloaded the SQLEXPR32.EXE from the following location http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15291 but have a feeling that it may try to install a new instance and not upgrade the existing SOPHOS db. Struggling to find any information on this, all I want to do is apply the standalone SP3 to my existing instance of SQL Express 2005

Anybody had any experience of this? Any guidance gratefully accepted.

Cheers

Chunk

:27133


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    Hello Chunk,

    upgrade should be offered by Microsoft Update. However you can also download the SP directly. For moe information please see How to obtain the latest service pack for SQL Server 2005.

    HTH

    Christian

    :27137
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    Hi Christian,

    thanks for the reply. The service pack is not appearing as an available update from Microsoft which is something I am also looking into.

    The link you sent is one I have been to before and when directed to the latest service pack for  SQL Express 2005 (sp4) it takes you to a similar page that I linked to in my original post. The question being does the exe that you get from these sources install a new instance of SQL Express 2005 sp3/4 or upgrade the existing instance? - (which is what I want to happen).

    Thanks for taking the time out to reply.

    Chunk

    :27139
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    Hello Chunk,

    had to do it only once (and I think it was the 2005 Express SP3) as I usually don't have to administer SQL. You might notice that the download is around 500MB thus quite different from the installer. IIRC it more or less told me what it was about to do and correctly upgraded the existing instances. Made a backup of the database first of course but didn't have a plan B - so you might want to wait for an answer from someone more knowledgeable :smileywink:. 

    Christian

    :27141
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    Hi Christian,

    thanks for the additional info. Like you I don't usually administer SQL so it's a bit of a grey area for me. The reason for my caution is whilst researching this topic I found a post where somebody wanted to do exactly the same as I do (but it was a BackupExec SQL instance they had) and they found the installer created a brand new instance instead of service packing the existing one.

    Unfortunately I too have no plan B as I don't have a test environment to try this on!

    Cheers

    Chunk

    :27143
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    Hello Chuck, it could be that the product Installer creates a new (and this should be the default) instance - without applying service to the existing instances. A service pack should correctly enumerate all existing instances (and even deal with coexisting full and Express instances). A new instance is not a problem anyway as long as the important instance is left intact. Christian
    :27147
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    Hi all,

    just wanted to update you with how this problem was resolved.

    So I ran the 'service pack' exe that I downloaded from MS (link in my first post) and as I feared it attempted to install a new instance of SQL Express 2005. It went through the wizard asking all kinds of questions such as authentication mode, not knowing if I was going to do anything 'detrimental' I figured the best thing would be to cancel it so as not to mess with the already installed SOPHOS instance.

    I then called support and spoke to somebody in Canada who was very helpful, I explained the situation, he spoke to his escalation engineer and they came back with the advice of just running the PureMessage upgrade as it would work just fine with SQL Express 2005 sp2. They were right and 4 days on it is running as it always did, flawlessly. :smileyhappy:

    So next time I need to do an upgrade perhaps I will have to do a complete reinstall and get the original instance of SQL Express 2005 sp2 out of there but in the meantime I can rest knowing that our mail is covered. Got a new mail server planned soon so this may all be academic anyway.

    Thanks to QC/Christian for his replies on this thread and thanks to Sophos support, one of the reasons we keep signed up.

    Cheers

    Chunk

    :27273
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