Removing corrupted Analysis Services installation

Received a task to upgrade service pack of SQL Server 2008. Looks so simple rite yeah I felt so…. See how it went

Copied SP1 file to server and ran the file it took 5mins after running the exe and thrown below error.

Then after reading error one thing understood something wrong with Analysis Service. Noticed one more thing there are 3 other instances on same server okie so guessed issue with other instances as well as they also have Analysis service running. So searched and found only solution most of articles suggested is to REPAIR the SQL server (I never did that before). So scheduled a downtime and started to run repair of sql server with installation CD. It went fine till end and completed fully giving error for Analysis Service again (LOL), stating only the services/features that are fully installed can only be repaired.

Now the only option left is to re-install the services. I was not knowing how to un-install only particular feature of SQL Server. Searched and this time didn’t found any articles J on how to do that so went back to BOL and found how to do that. So as mentioned in BOL un-installed only Analysis Services from ‘Add/Remove Programs’. To remove certain feature go to Control Panel, select Add/Remove Programs and after clicking on SQL Server 2008 service it gives option to Uninstall\Change, after selecting that option it opens a windows where we can select the features we want to un-install:

After removing the service I have re-installed Analysis service from installation CD to the same instance. Now again ran SP1 but still it failed with same error as mentioned in beginning. So got no option to do hence verified with users weather they actually need AS service? Luckily none of them were using. So removed As completely from the instance and ran SP1 and it went fine now (thank god).

So as per my observation the options are either to run REPAIR if it fails then try re-installing the respective service and if that also fails we should re-install SQL SERVER. I would be happy to hear if any other ways of fixing this issue.

Then started upgrade of other instances where I haven’t touched As service still. It went for some time…..

and went till end successfully J

So finally upgraded all instances with SP1.