SIM 5.0 Installation - Database Initialization Fails

[E Northcraft]

I've spent the better part of a day trying to upgrade SIM 4.2 to 5.0. The only problem seems to be in the installation of the database. During the "creating database and applying schema" phase, the installation returns a fatal message "Database initialization failed".

It seems that this is not an uncommon problem but most of the replies refer back to an August posting (thread 950264) that just doesn't seem to help me. It would seem that special characters in the password are the root of my problem. I've got a dedicated Insight user with as simple a password as I can create given my domain complexity requirements. The password is "stupid-55". The only "special" character is the dash, but that seems to be the most benign that I can muster within my given constraints (7 chars min, one numeric, one non-alphanumeric). Obviously I can't change the entire domain's requirements for this install.

My SIM server is an ML370 with dual 800's and 4GB of RAM. I have an external MS SQL 2000 server. This configuration was working just fine for 4.2. In fact, I was using the same user ID and complex password to create that database. Oddly, the new 5.0 database is getting created on my SQL server. My guess is that the schema is not getting applied. I've examined the SQL logs and the only entries that seem out of place are this: "Configuration option 'show advanced options' changed from 1 to 0. Run RECONFIGURE."

Any help would be appreciated. I am growing weary of installing, uninstalling, and rebooting.

[Todd Schelin]

I have noticed that if you have an existing PMP database during the migration from 4.2 to 5.0 the error will occur. I had to delete my PMP database from the SQL server for the installation to complete.

[E Northcraft]

Thanks Todd. Your comments looked promising. On your advice I blew away all existing SIM databases: 4.2, numerous "failed" 5.0, PMP. I then went through the normal uninstall, reboot, reinstall procedure. Same result - "Database initialization failed".

In addition to your suggestion and on the advice of other online searches, I rebooted the SQL server. Running SP_CONFIGURE on each database showed that the "show advanced option" was properly set to 0. I am assuming that I can rule out that as an issue.