How to resolve some install problems for 7.02 on Windows 7 64 bit

Question

This is a short re-cap of some of the issues I came across when installing NSP 7.02 on Win 7 system. I'm posting it here rather than writing a blog - there are numerous excellent guides already out there, but the particular issues below meant I had to collect info from several other posts, search other forums, and also do a bit of research on my own. Therefore, I hope that this post can be useful for those who - like me - had to resort to searching the forums... sometimes in vain.
Installing the 7.02 Sneak Preview on a 64-bit system is not that straightforward, but "doable". I've just spent the weekend successfully installing on two systems; an HP Touchsmart laptop (i3 processor) and my trusty Dell desktop (Core 2). Both machines have 4Gb RAM, barely sufficient, but the thing is up and running. At last.
Compared to earlier Sneak Previews, or the 32-bit varieties, this is no walk in the park. Definitely not like the first 2004s, which ran as smoothly as a knife through butter (at least on XP).
Here are my own tips, based on the issues I experienced:
Phase 5: Failure to start MAXDB instance - installer reports no MAXDB software installed. Curiously, this happened on one of the machines, not the other. Even weirder, it happened on the machine that had previously had a MAXDB installation (which was wiped clear before installing).
I got around this one by manually installing MAXDB. The steps were:
Launch the 64-bit MAXDB installer - sdbinst.exe - from the 64-bit MAXDB directory (NOT the 32 bit, which won't run on your 64 bit system anyway). It's in one of the sub-directories - search for it. Use it to start a manual install of MAXDB, and select the "tutorial" database. This will install a sample (256Mb) database on your system. Now, re-start the miniSAP installer, and you should pass phase 5 without issues. (See info below on the STATISTIC file!)
ABAP import issues: If the ABAP import step fails, with at least one of the 37 import jobs failing, this could help:
Break off the installation. Go to the sapinst_dir\...\ADA\CENTRAL directory, and delete all .TSK files and their related .TXT counterparts. These are (to my knowledge) created during the ABAP import, based on the DB schema files that are used for the ABAP import. If you remove these (or at least the ones that caused the import to fail), it will re-apply them when you re-start the installation and select the option to use existing installation.
Also remember to delete the "statistic" file in the same directory - it will generate an error if you do not get rid of it before re-starting the installation.
Usually, this is enough to ensure the ABAP import works.
Install license and developer key:
The system calls itself "SAP-INTERNAL", not "DEMOSYSTEM". This is somewhat confusing, as the NSP license key you request from SAP will not load due to different installation names. The workaround is to DELETE all temporary (pre-installed) licenses. Mark them, right-click, then delete. Make sure there's NOTHING left in SLICENSE, then upload the file you got from the license request page (NSP, 2004s Service pack 9 or higher). This should work.
Only now can you use the developer access key of BCUSER.
Remember, every time you re-start the installation and select the "use old" option, you have to remove the mentioned "statistics" file from the ADA\CENTRAL directory, since it keeps track of what has been done so far.
This version seem to suck resources like no other sneak preview has done before. I'm looking forward to installing it on a new, powerful machine - just have to get around to ordering it first...
Regards,
Trond

Answer 1

Hi Trond,
Extremely helpful observations here. Am sure quite some folks will hit this thread!
Regards,
Srikishan