Today I got call from one of my friend for help in installing SQL Server 2008 R2. Apparently, he somehow cancelled the installation at very beginning of process for some reason and then every single attempt to install it again failed with really weird error. To resolve this problem, we removed registry entries leftover, removed any and every temp files and folders created by SQL Server installation but nothing helped. All the time we get this strange error,
MsiGetProductInfo failed to retrieve ProductVersion for package with Product Code = ‘{8BDD006D-D5F0-4AAA-BA13-65995063EC44}’. Error code: 1608
With little hope I fired up firefox and search google with this string. With little surprise, we were not the only ones who are getting this error. And there were numerous blogs and solutions about it. Though none seem to have explanation why we are getting this error but all seem to suggest one common solution.
All we needed to do is to reverse the GUID and simply search of it in registry. In our case it was D600DDB8 (just the first part), and we searched registry with that parameter and deleted all the entries we encountered (Ofcourse we took backup of registry before deleting anything as removing wrong entry could be fatal in Windows). I think we deleted about 2-3 entries and then restarted the installation.
This time it just worked and went all the way to end !!!
So I think moral of story is, Don’t touch Microsoft product while it is being installed or else you will have to find hack to get it working again !! 
It’s Just A Thought … 
