Cant get SQL Express Installed

Hi-

I had previously had VS2005 Beta installed from my MSDN discs. When it expired, I uninstalled it and downloaded VWD Express to install. VWD installed fine, but the SQL Server Express will not install. The VWD install package doesn't give me any feedback, just says it failed. I tried dowloading and installing SQL Express separately, and it tells me that I have to uninstall all components from other versions. I have done that, but still wont install. If I use the uninstall utility on the website, it tells me it can't find any components, and all of the components listed in the manual uninstall instructions are missing, so I can't find anything further to uninstall. (FYI: I'm running XP Pro SP2).

I'm wondering if a registry setting or something didn't get updated on uninstall. I see a registry folder for "Microsoft SQL Server" but I do not know if this could be getting in the way.

Any help would be appreciated.

-Moz

I guess the issue is caused by imcompletely uninstalled VS2005 beta components. You can find SQL Server setup logs under the "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup\Bootstrap\LOG\Files" folder. However the logs are always verbose to read. So it may be better to uninstall all existing VS2005 components completely, please refer to this article:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/support/uninstall/default.aspx

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Yeah, I followed the uninstall instructions, but none of the programs to uninstall are in my list. I looked at the logs (thanx for the lead on that) and it appears that the errors are thrown when it loads the msi.dll. The errors in the log indicate that it's finding incompatible versions of the following:

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 CTP|||

I got this straightened out. Nothing was working, but I stumbled on this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2005/10/30/487096.aspx

and the steps and tools he provided did the necessary clean up for me, after which I was able to get the express edition installed.

Thanx for the help!

-Moz