“An installation package for the product Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client cannot be found” – during SQL Server 2017 install

~ Hamish Watson

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:

NativeClientError
If a later version is installed – why does the installer want me to install it…??!!

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:

Screen Shot 2019-07-20 at 11.14.04.png
Huh – I didn’t install that… oh wait – Visual Studio probably did!!

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.

7 thoughts on ““An installation package for the product Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client cannot be found” – during SQL Server 2017 install”

  1. I have a similar problem with SQL Server 2019 RC1 installation, but in this case I don’t receive any errors on log. After uninstall of SQL Server 2012 Native Client, it works!
    Thanks!

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  2. I have a similar problem with SQL Server 2019 RC1 installation, but in this case I don’t receive any errors on log. After uninstall of SQL Server 2012 Native Client, it works!
    Thanks!

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    Reply

  3. I was having issues around this and your steps helped me get round it. Thanks very much.

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  4. Spent an unhappy 3 hours on this… main because, like you, I’ve installed this many times. On this occasion I installed Visual Studio first!
    One to remember… and thanks.

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  7. Hey thanks Hamish,

    I cannot tell you how much time this probably saved me. Had to install SQL 2016 on my machine and was blocked. Would have probably gone around in circles for hours.

    Double yip !

    Regards,

    Greg

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