I was trying to install HP Insight Control server deployment (previously called HP Rapid Deployment Pack) on Sql Server 2008 Express. I will just call it Deployment Server or DS from here.

I first installed SQL 2008 Express with Advanced Services and configured it to listen op Port 1433 as required by DS.

The installation of the first part (Deployment Server version 6.9.4) indicated a successfull install but the prereqisuites check of the Hotfix version 2.0 installer failed on the last step:

This was strange because I didn’t yet startup the console, so I decided to start it and close it as this would perhaps allow me to continue.

The next screen was a clear indication something went wrong:

I presumed that the ODBC connection was missing so I went to Adminstrative Tools | Data Sources (ODBC). But the ODBC connection was present. I then fired up SQL Server Management Studio which showed me the eXpress database was missing.
Note that on x64 versions of Windows there are two versions of the ODBC connections (tool): an x86 (32 bit) and an x64 (64 bit) version.

And even worse: the HP Installer does a silent install of Altiris DS but hides this error for us and just reports success!

My next step was to do a manual database install, this can be done by starting hpfeatures\ds\Server.exe.

Server.exe fortunately allows us to install only the database:

Database installer is unpacked to a subfolder in %temp% (in my case %temp%\apt1) it may be convenient to save this folder.

After a while the Database Installer presented and error message:

I looked into the install folder and noticed there were several .sql files (sql server scripts) and osql.exe. osql is a commandline tool that can execute sql statements and it can import .sql files.

Launching the supplied version of osql indicated that it was unable to connect to SQL at all. I did a guess that the problem was the instancename: even though you select Default Instance when installing the instance name is SQLEXPRESS instead of MSSQLSERVER (which is used in the full product).

I did a reinstall of SQL Express using a custom instance name of MSSQLSERVER and now osql could connect (it asked for credentials).

I reran the Database Install and now it worked.

In the end I am not sure if this error only happens when using the HP Branded version of Altiris or only when using SQL Express WITH advanced services but I hope this article will help you troubleshoot similar issues.