Recently I got called in by a regular customer for my On Demand (50 minutes) service. Every single day I keep two hours available to help DBAs who need urgent help with SQL Server. When I connected with a customer, I was expecting to solve their SQL Server performance tuning problem. However, I quickly realized that the issue was not SQL Server Performance but was rather with SQL Server 2017 installation. Let us see how we can fix the error users are receiving related to VS Shell.
While customers were installing SQL Server 2017, they were receiving the following error:
The following error has occurred:
VS Shell installation has failed with exit code 1638.
As customers were performing this installation during their maintenance window they were really worried if the installation will be successful or not. Let us see what we did to fix their error.
Workaround / Solution
The solution to this error was very much simpler. We had to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable.
Here is the link to download the redistributables.
X64:Â https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=746572
x86:Â https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=746571
Once we install them and rebooted the server, the error did not show up again. I think it is very easy solutions. If you are going to install SQL Server 2017, I suggest you just install this redistrubtables before you start your SQL Server installation and you will not face any error.
Note: You have to install any one of the version x64 for 64 bit OS and x86 for 32 bit OS. Please do not try to install both on your server.
Reference:Â Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)
