Windows 2012 R2 In-Place Upgrade: SQL Configuration Manager Disappears

[Matt_Fraser]

Ok, first a few caveats:

• Windows Server 2012 R2 isn't quite yet officially supported by SAP at the time of this writing, but it's coming very soon.  It is currently supported in the First Customer Shipment program, details of which can be found in Note 1955608.
• In-place upgrades of Windows servers with SAP software installed are supported, but not in all situations, and generally a system copy or migration to new hardware with a fresh install of Windows is recommended instead.  Details about when in-place upgrades are supported can be found in Note 1494740, which is applicable for Windows Server 2012 and higher as well as the versions explicitly mentioned in the Note's title.

So, with that out of the way, here's an interesting 'gotcha' which you may encounter if you do elect to perform an in-place upgrade with SQL Server installed.

The scenario is upgrading a Windows Server 2008 R2 sp1 system with SQL Server 2012 sp1 to Windows Server 2012 R2.  SQL Server is previously upgraded from 2005, which may or may not be a factor.

After the Windows upgrade is complete, everything works fine, except the SQL Server Configuration Manager tool is missing from the Start menu.  This is definitely a minor annoyance, and it appears to not be an isolated case, as I found external blogs mentioning this issue.  I want to give credit to Marnix Wolf for figuring out what is happening and how to fix it (Thoughts on OpsMgr and System Center 2012: Quick Trick: Where Is SQL Server Configuration Manager Af...).  In a nutshell, the upgrade is unregistering the Configuration Manager MMC snap-in, but the files required to operate the Configuration Manager are still present.

So, how to fix it?

The easy way is to find another SQL Server 2012 system and copy a shortcut from it.  If you install SQL Server 2012 fresh on Windows 2012, you won't have this problem, so with a little luck you have such a system sitting around.  Open the folder C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft SQL Server 2012\Configuration Tools, and copy the shortcut SQL Server Configuration Manager from that folder to the same folder on your upgraded system, where you'll notice that it is missing.

Alternatively, you may be able to copy the shortcut from a location on the same server you just upgraded.  By default, the 2012 R2 upgrade creates a copy of the critical folders on your C: drive before starting the upgrade and places them in C:\Windows.old.  So, if you drill into C:\Windows.old\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft SQL Server 2012\Configuration Tools, you should find that same shortcut for SQL Server Configuration Manager there.  Copy it to the same location outside of \Windows.old (i.e., just remove \Windows.old from the file path), and you will be good to go.

That's it.  Look in your Start menu, and now the Configuration Manager shows up as it should, with the correct icon.  Click it, and the tool starts and operates correctly.

If you don't have another functioning SQL 2012 system from which to copy the shortcut, then you should be able to make your own shortcut, in this same folder, with the target pointing to C:\Windows\SysWOW64\mmc.exe /32 C:\Windows\SysWOW64\SQLServerManager11.msc.