Upgrading MSDE prior to installing Sophos PureMessage

When installing Sophos PureMessage anti-spam / mail filtering software, if your Microsoft SQL Desktop Engine (MSDE) engine is not at SP4, the installer will report that it is Unable to connect to \local\SOPHOS. However if you try to install SP4 for MSDE, it won’t necessarily upgrade the correct version of MSDE.

To check which version of MSDE 2000 you are using:

1. Open ‘Add/Remove Programs’
2. Locate ‘Microsoft SQL DesktopServer Engine (SOPHOS)’
3. Select ‘Click here for support information’.Compare the version you are using to the table below:
   

   Supported	Not supported
   8.00.2039 – MSDE 2000 SP4 and later	8.00.194 – MSDE 2000 RTM
   Â	8.00.384 – MSDE 2000 SP1
   Â	8.00.534 – MSDE 2000 SP2
   Â	8.00.760 – MSDE 2000 SP3Â
   Â	8.00.761 – MSDE 2000 SP3a

   If you are using an unsupported version, you must upgrade now.

As per this article from the Sophos knowledge base, the fix is pretty simple.

From the Microsoft website, download, save and run the MSDE 2000 SP4.

Note that when you run this exe file, it’ll ask for a folder location to unpack and suggest c:\sql2ksp4 which is fine. Don’t run setup.exe yet!

Open a command prompt and navigate to:

C:\SQL2KSP4\MSDE\

Type the command or copy this into a batch file:

setup /upgradesp sqlrun INSTANCENAME=SOPHOS /L*v c:\msdelog.txt

I recently had an issue on an SBS 2003 server where the service pack would not load. I had to modify the command line to specify to use a blank sa password:

setup /upgradesp sqlrun INSTANCENAME=SOPHOS blanksapwd=1 /L*v c:\msdelog.txt

 

This will upgrade the SOPHOS MSDE instance. You won’t get any report of it having completed so just give it a few minutes and wait for the disk activity to cease.

Checking the SQL version in add/remove programs should now look like this:

You can now run the PureMessage 3.0.2 installer again to complete installation.