This blog post is about a situation that initially perplexed me – I was installing SQL Server 2017 onto a new DEMO machine – running Windows Server 2019. This install is one I have done over 50 times, if not more.

Halfway through I got an interesting error that (1) I’ve never seen before and (2) did not expect post SQL Server 2014.

MSI Error: 1706 An installation package for the product Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client cannot be found. Try the installation again using a valid copy of the installation package ‘sqlncli.msi’.

And it then asked me to locate the install files for SQL Server 2012 Native Client.

I (obviously) could not find those as I had not installed it – so I downloaded the native Client off Microsoft’s website and then proceeded to get this error:

At which point I wondered what the heck was going on….

Until I remembered that unlike my normal setup I had installed Visual Studio 2019 on the VM first. So I looked in Programs and Features and lo and behold there was SQL Server Native Client:

I also noticed SQL Server 2016 LocalDB which is installed by Visual Studio – which I made a note to upgrade to version 2017 as this can cause issues with things like the TRANSLATE function that was introduced in SQL Server 2017.

So I uninstalled SQL Server 2012 Native Client and reinstalled SQL Server 2017 Developer Edition and boom!! – it worked.

Yip.