I work for a consulting firm. Customers are reporting being annoyed with the popup "Help Make Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Better". Some customers don't want to be bothered with this even once. Is there a way to keep this popup from ever appearing
The customers are intelligent. They understand why the popup appears and what its purpose is. The only point to address is that the customers have paid for SQL Server, they are annoyed by this feature and they want a way to suppress it. I want to give the customers what they want. When customers tells me something is a nuisance, it's not my place to tell them they are wrong.
Nuisance: Help Make Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Better
DaverDee
Thanks for that answer.
If you examine the template.ini, you'll see that if you use the default settings in the template.ini file, these items will be configured as turned off.
Here is the relevant excerpt from the template.ini file:
;--------------------------------------------------------------------
; If you enable ERRORREPORTING, SQL Server, SQL Server Agent and Analysis Server will be configured to automatically send a report to Microsoft if a fatal error occurs.
; Microsoft uses error reports to improve SQL Server functionality, and treats all information as confidential.
; To enable error reporting specify ERRORREPORTING=1
; By default ERRORREPORTING=0
ERRORREPORTING=
;--------------------------------------------------------------------
; If you enable SQMREPORTING, SQL Server Products will be configured to automatically
; send periodic reports to Microsoft on feature usage. These reports are used to better understand
; how our customers use our products: which SQL services are installed, which features are being used,
; database deployment, use, and maintenance patterns, etc. This will help us determine how to improve reliability and how to better target resources in ; future offerings.
; To enable error reporting specify SQMREPORTING=1;
; By default SQMREPORTING=0
SQMREPORTING=
JonasHei
There's not a supported way to do this. That said, if you fuss around with the CustomerFeedback key in the registry at this location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90
you might be able to figure something out. Perhaps pre-populating it with the appropriate value will work. Or perhaps it will cause Setup to fail; I don't know.
Good luck...
Edited to amend: actually there is a straightforward way to do this that is supported: Do a command-line install, and on the command line specify whichever value you choose for the two parameters, SQMReporting and ErrorReporting. Refer to template.ini in the Servers folder of the install media for details.