Recently, I encountered an interesting issue while setting up my machines. As part of my testing process, I use virtual machines (VMs) and decided to create a domain by setting up a VM as a domain controller and another as a member server. However, I made a mistake during the installation of SQL Server and accidentally ran the setup on the domain controller.
According to Microsoft’s documentation, installing SQL Server on a domain controller is not recommended. In fact, there is a warning in the SQL Server setup itself that advises against this practice. Nevertheless, I proceeded with the installation and encountered an error at the end.
The error message stated: “Wait on the Database Engine recovery handle failed. Check the SQL Server error log for potential causes.” I followed the instructions and checked the SQL Server error log, where I found several error messages:
- Error: 17190, Severity: 16, State: 1. Initializing the FallBack certificate failed with error code: 1, state: 20, error number: 0. Unable to initialize SSL encryption because a valid certificate could not be found, and it is not possible to create a self-signed certificate.
- Error: 17182, Severity: 16, State: 1. TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0x80092004, status code 0x80. Reason: Unable to initialize SSL support. Cannot find object or property.
- Error: 17182, Severity: 16, State: 1. TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0x80092004, status code 0x1. Reason: Initialization failed with an infrastructure error. Check for previous errors. Cannot find object or property.
- Error: 17826, Severity: 18, State: 3. Could not start the network library because of an internal error in the network library. To determine the cause, review the errors immediately preceding this one in the error log.
- Error: 17120, Severity: 16, State: 1. SQL Server could not spawn FRunCommunicationsManager thread. Check the SQL Server error log and the Windows event logs for information about possible related problems.
After some research, I discovered that this issue could be related to the SQL Service account. In my case, the default configuration was set to “NT Service\MSSQLServer.” To resolve the error, I uninstalled SQL Server and reinstalled it, this time selecting the “Local System” account for the SQL Service in the setup wizard. This simple change resolved the issue, and the installation completed successfully.
Have you ever encountered a similar error when installing SQL Server on a regular machine? If so, what was your solution? Let me know in the comments below!