Installing a new SQL Server 2005 instance that requires SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS collation sequence at the server level. This is the install default if the server’s Regional Settings are English (United States) – this particular server wasn’t. Found plenty of information online regarding changing the server collation sequence but the exact process escaped me. Below is really just about formatting the command but may help someone…

To change the server level collation, a rebuild of system databases is required. Do this by running setup.exe (the installer) from the command line. The following command from Books Online (search for ‘run setup from command prompt’) is exactly what is required:

start /wait \setup.exe /qn INSTANCENAME=MSSQLSERVER REINSTALL=SQL_Engine REBUILDDATABASE=1 SAPWD= SQLCOLLATION=

Note the location is specified. This is required even though you will be running this from the location that setup.exe is in. I was running it from a local folder path (not a CD/DVD drive) and it required the path to setup.exe in full (i.e. can’t just use “setup.exe /qn …” even if your are at the location setup.exe is in) otherwise it would fail to locate SQLRun_SQL.msi or SQLrun.msi, can’t recall which.

The /qn switch which is for msiexec. It will run the setup process with no UI, it could also run with /qb, probably just as fine.

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