So I rebuilt my old K6-III 450MHz box and installed Windows Server 2003 on it. My plan was to get SQL Server 2005 installed and start playing around with it and learn more about the SQL language. All was going well during setup until it attempted to start the MSSQL Service. I received this error:
“The SQL Server service failed to start. For more information, see the SQL Server Books Online topics, “How to: View SQL Server 2005 Setup Log Files” and “Starting SQL Server Manually.”"

I thought perhaps it was an odd setup quirk, so I attempted to start the service manually. This failed. I double-checked that it was set up to log in as a Local Service (because I’m in a workgroup, not a domain) and I was, so that was not the case. So the online research began.

After a small bit of research, I found that this “bug” appeared way back in Beta 1 (when it was then called “Yukon”). The bug was never fixed and made it’s way into the final launch.

…And I don’t see anything in Service Pack 1 either.

Any AMD processor based on the K6 family or earlier is not supported by SQL Server 2005. Apparently the K6 processors use an incompatable instruction set which causes the engine to crash. Therefore my K6-III is officially worthless to MSSQL 2005.

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I guess I’ll have to think of another application for my NOT-MSSQL 2005 box here…

~Jaker

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