Recently I was trying to do some test with old version of SQL and ran into interesting issue. I ran the setup of SQL Server 2008 RTM on Windows Server 2012. It failed with error

The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion

The error means that SQL Setup was unable to start the SQL Server service in middle of the installation. I had no choice but  to cancel the installation. Here are the messages logged in various setup logs. here is the snip from Summary.txt

Overall summary:

  Final result:                  SQL Server installation failed. To continue, investigate the reason for the failure, correct the problem, uninstall SQL Server, and then rerun SQL Server Setup.

  Exit code (Decimal):           -595541211

  Exit facility code:            1152

  Exit error code:               49957

  Exit message:                  SQL Server installation failed. To continue, investigate the reason for the failure, correct the problem, uninstall SQL Server, and then rerun SQL Server Setup.

  Start time:                    2015-05-08 21:26:19

  End time:                      2015-05-08 21:37:05

  Requested action:              Install

  Log with failure:              C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20150508_212400\Detail.txt

…

…

Detailed results:

  Feature:                       Database Engine Services

  Status:                        Failed: see logs for details

  MSI status:                    Passed

  Configuration status:          Failed: see details below

  Configuration error code:      0xDC80C325

  Configuration error description: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion. 

  Configuration log:             C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20150508_212400\Detail.txt

I love the error message in summary as it tells me what exactly need to be done. Investigate, correct the cause, uninstall SQL and re-run setup. Perfect! So let’s investigate. Detail.txt had nothing interesting than telling that I am not able to start SQL Service. Since SQL service was present after cancelling the setup, I tried to start manually but it was same error via services.msc. So I tried to start SQL Server executable via command prompt by running sqlserver.exe –c –sMSQLSERVER command and it gave me below popup message.

Problem signature:

  Problem Event Name:         BEX64

  Application Name:           sqlservr.exe

  Application Version:        2009.100.1600.1

  Application Timestamp:      4bb6b40b

  Fault Module Name:          StackHash_120f

  Fault Module Version:       0.0.0.0

  Fault Module Timestamp:     00000000

  Exception Offset:           PCH_EF_FROM_ntdll+0x000000000009177A

  Exception Code:             c0000005

  Exception Data:             0000000000000008

  OS Version:                 6.3.9600.2.0.0.272.7

  Locale ID:         1033

  Additional Information 1:         120f

  Additional Information 2:         120feecb532e5330843bb85768dc5d8d

  Additional Information 3:         86ef

  Additional Information 4:         86ef44a294d70f6087e5d1fcc74465eb

 

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  C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt

The code highlighted above is Access Violation hex code. I did some more search and found below KB

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2681562 (How to use SQL Server in Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2)

So, now I know that my issue is that RTM version of SQL Server 2008 is not supported on Windows Server 2012 and I have to do slipstreaming of media so that SP2 is installed along with RTM.

I Slipstreamed media using Peter’s blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/petersad/archive/2011/07/13/how-to-slipstream-sql-server-2008-r2-and-a-sql-server-2008-r2-service-pack-1-sp1.aspx

After making media ready, I uninstalled SQL, restarted machine and used the slipstream media. This time I was able to install SQL without any error.

Hope this helps.