Over the past few months I have been upgrading most of my SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) 2005 installs to 2008.  Recently, a developer found some issues with the upgrade and we concluded that SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 and a recent Cumulative Hotfix would resolve the problem.  About 1 minute into the service pack install the following dialogue box appeared:

After browsing to that directory I realized that not only was that file missing, but so was anything else that belonged in that directory.  This directory contains information that is needed when you upgrade, patch or remove several Microsoft Products.  In my case SQL Server Reporting Services.  To make things even worse, the contents of this folder is unique to each server and each SQL Server Reporting Instance that you install on that server.  As a result, the contents cannot be copied from one server to the other.

Unfortunately, I am not going to provide you the steps to solve this problem, because we found out that our server was in a very inconsistent state.  Therefore any steps that I provide probably would not work on a different server.  I would like to applaud the efforts of the Microsoft Engineers.  They were relentless at their efforts. What I will tell you is that the Installer folder is hidden and it should stay that way.  Protect the contents of that folder with your life :). 

Talk to you soon

Patrick LeBlanc, TSQLScripts.com and SQL Lunch

SQL Down South