Reporting a product bug to Microsoft

I needed to update our installation of SQL Server 2008 to include Integration Services so that maintenance plans would run. I have local admin privilege on the machine, but as with most Microsoft related installation tasks, you routinely get so far through the process and you’re hit with the SeSecurityPrivilege error - that is, you don’t have some permission or other. The installation process goes wrong and you have to cancel out of the whole process in order to restart it with an account that has the privilege.

Except in this case, that doesn’t actually work - there’s a bug in the SQL Server 2008 installation mechanise.

Clicking Retry fails again because you don’t have the privilege.
Clicking Cancel fails… because you don’t have the privilege.

Granted, it’s a fairly obscure bug, but it’s a bug nonetheless. My only option is to physically kill a process, and I really don’t like doing that sort of operation on production machines which are half way through trying to update the configuration of a live SQL server*.

I figured I’d report the issue to someone at Microsoft. Long story short, after a bit of hunting around, the endeavour was futile (as per this guy and this guy) and I can’t find a single way to report a bug to Microsoft about their arsing software (that doesn’t involve going through direct support channels, paying fees, checking license blah blah blah. I care about this a bit… but not that much.)

I’m sure someone somewhere in Microsoft’s vast array of tech support type people could monitor a “bugs@microsoft.com” email address and actually help to listen to its customers. I love my Mac.. I don’t know if a bug reporting mechanism exists as above… but then I’ve never had to do it. [CueFlame] “They just work” ! [/Flame]

As it turns out, this is actually a serious issue. Manually killing the installation process halfway through means the installation files that it creates aren’t rolled back/destroyed. So when you then go run the installation again… SQL Server thinks you’ve already installed the thing you’re trying to install. So you’re then faced with “repair”-ing an instance which is absolutely fine.