Installing Management Studio on Separate Computer from SQL 2005

I'm trying to install Management Studio on my dev box (separate from my server). But it won't install. Can someone give me a pointer or two?why won't it install? telling us the error would help.|||

It's basically complaining that SQL Server is not present on the machine.

I've already read however that if you install SSExpress 2005, the Management Studio won't install.

Hopefully that gets addressed somehow. Why should install order affect what I can and can't have on my machine?

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This is absolutely a supported configuration so something strange is going on. When do you get the error? What is the exact error message? Take a look at the following summary log file: %Program Files%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\log\summary.txt - it should provide additional clues or point to another log file with details. If there isn't any additional information in summary.txt take a look at: %Program Files%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\log\files\*_core(local).log - you'll want to look at the latest version of this file. Near the bottom it should provide some clues as to what's going on.

Dan

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I'll try the install again tonight and let you know what the exact message is.

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To explain what happened, I deleted the local Windows Installer cache (that holds a copy of all the MSIs you have installed). When I did that, the SQL Server installer could not find the cached MSIs for MSXML6 and balked.

My solution was a handy tool called MSIZAP which you can use to repair aborted installations (or overzealous use of shift+delete in hidden system folders).by removing all references to the orphaned product.

Now if there were a way to tell MSI to not cache everything I install (the reason I butchered my system in the first place was that the cache had grown to gargantuan proportions).

So after zapping the orphaned SQLServer Install and reinstalling it, I am now able to use Management Studio from my development box.