There are quite a few things to remember when you are installing a clustered instance of SQL server.

For 2005, you need to remember a few things

• Global groups for your accounts.
• Service accounts to go in those groups.
• Rights to add those accounts to those groups during the install.
• Set up MSDTC as a clustered resource.
• Get your IP address from the network admin and ensure your SQL virtual name is not used.
• Get your drives set up properly and make sure to test failover before you begin.
• Make sure you are logged out of node 2 and have the task scheduler service running.

So I thought I had everything gathered up and ready to go tonight.  Nope.

Near the end of the install I see this:

remote setup failed

After a moments google I find this:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/910851 , which gets me to the task scheduler log on the remote machine.

Unable to load task.
The specific error is:
0x80070002: The system cannot find the file specified.

I found a suggestion from a MS MVP saying that you need to make sure your install account has access to the install files. I figured that had to be it – so I moved them to the c:\temp directory and voila, a good install.

Evidently, whatever account the install was running under couldn’t access my desktop – but I did enter MY domain account to start the account, so maybe it switched to the SQL service account to do the install? Doesn’t make sense to me.

The lesson I learned to day is to never install from a network share or a user directory – put the install files on a drive which has an admin share and this shouldn’t happen.