Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000) Release A

Brief Description

Download Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000) Release A, a new release of MSDE 2000 that is now available for free. This release includes the fixes for the Slammer (W32.slammer) worm.

Overview

This download is for new installations only. If you already have an earlier version of MSDE and would like to upgrade to MSDE 2000 Service Pack 3a (SP3a), you will need to use the SQL Server 2000 SP3a download.

MSDE 2000 Release A is functionally equivalent to SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine SP3a except for the following:

New licensing agreement

Removal of the merge modules that can be used to embed MSDE 2000 Release A with applications

New ReadMeMSDE2000A.htm that contains information specific to this release.

This new version of MSDE contains all the fixes that are included with SQL Server 2000 SP3a version of MSDE.

However, to apply the most current security fixes, you will need to download and install the latest security hotfix from Microsoft TechNet.

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System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000; Windows 98; Windows ME; Windows NT; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP

Intel Pentium or compatible 166-megahertz (MHz) or higher processor

128 megabytes (MB) of RAM (Windows XP), 64 MB of RAM (Windows 2000), and 32MB of RAM for all other operating systems

44 MB of available hard disk space

Important Note Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE) will not be supported on the Microsoft Vista operating system. If you plan to build an application and redistribute a database with it, you should consider using SQL Server 2005 Express Edition instead. For more information, see the Running SQL Server on Windows Vista page on microsoft.com.

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Instructions

Steps to download and extract MSDE 2000 Release A:

Step 1: Download the MSDE2000A.exe file by clicking save button. If you click open button, then you will be directly viewing the licensing agreement information as described in Step#2.

Note: MSDE2000A.exe is a self-extracting package that contains all the files required to install MSDE 2000 Release A. In addition it contains ReadMeMSDE2000A.htm that contains useful information about this release, including pre-requisites and step by step installation instructions.

Step 2: Double Click the downloaded .exe file, read through the licensing agreement information and if you accept the terms, click the "I Agree" button.

Step 3: You will be asked to specify a directory where the files will be extracted. You can specify a directory that does not exist, the extracting process will detect and create the directory structure on your behalf.

Step 4: Once you have extracted the file, for installation prerequisites and instructions, open the ReadMeMSDE2000A.htm (this can be found in the root of the directory you specified in the above step#3).

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