I had Windows 8.0 on my laptop, and went to Win 8.1 earlier this year. Everything went well. Even this spring, when I installed the 8.1 update, things went well on my laptop. This was my test environment, as most days I work on my desktop. I decided to then update my desktop, and things went well overall, until I went to use SQL Server.
At first, I couldn’t connect to SQL Server from SSMS. No big deal, I thought the update had stopped a service. I checked Services, and was surprised to not see a SQL Server database service. I had a browser and VSS service, but nothing else.
I rebooted my machine, which didn’t help. I manually ran sqlservr.exe, and it failed with permissions issued. I tried repairing the SQL install, but that didn’t work either. More than a few people reported similar things, but nothing I found on the Internet worked. I kept getting security SPID errors, so I just uninstalled, and then reinstalled SQL Server.
I’m not sure under which accounts I had my service running, and it’s possible I used my own account, but usually I set up a SQLService account on my machines. In any case, it was a hassle and pain.
I’m not telling you to avoid the 8.1 Update, but I am warning you and noting that you might want to be sure you have good backups of your systems.
Voice of the DBA 
Comments
6 responses to “Beware the Windows 8.1 Update Upgrade”
I had the same experience. Take a look here: http://spaghettidba.com/2013/10/24/sql-server-services-are-gone-after-upgrading-to-windows-8-1/
IMHO the service was running under the service SID account.
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I actually read your post, and was thinking it would help. However it didn’t for me. Repair failed, and I couldn’t get the instance to fix itself, or even uninstall. After I rebooted, I couldn’t install a default instance anymore.
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Oh! Too bad.
It would have been interesting to analyze in detail to see what was broken by the upgrade.
We’ll see when upgrading to Windows 9 🙂
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[…] 18, 2014 I applied the Windows 8.1 update a few weeks ago and had some issues with my machine. Windows was fine, but I lost my SQL Server service. A few others, including some of the […]
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I had similar issues when upgrading from Windows 8.0 to Windows 8.1 ranging from driver issues and start menu items disappearing. It seems to also not be consistent every time. Nowadays I tend to stick with a clean install of Windows 8.1.
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[…] applied the Windows 8.1 update a few weeks ago and had some issues with my machine. Windows was fine, but I lost my SQL Server service. A few other users, including some of the […]
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