I was tasked with doing some upgrades for a client in their Configuration Manager 2012 environment recently.  They wanted the SQL database on the back end upgraded to something more recent so SQL Server 2012 it is.  So we confirmed we met all of the software prerequisites and began the upgrade.  Setup Support Rules were happy.

Look at all those green check marks!

All of the features were auto-populated showing that they were already installed and supported.  We confirmed we had adequate disk space, more little green check marks.

Many more little green check marks.

The Upgrade Rules were checked and many more little green check marks were displayed and now we’re ready to upgrade.

Ready, Set, Go!

The process begins, everything looks happy, the upgrade appears to be proceeding as planned and then this happened.

Ouch, so much red it makes my eyes hurt.

So we reviewed the logs, double-checked the prerequisites yet again, searched and researched to see if we could find out what was missing.  No luck looking at entries in the log files so I did a quick search using “an error occurred for a dependency of the feature” and came across this which pointed to an already installed SQL Server 2012 component, the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client.  It may have been installed as part of the SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Advisor which seems odd but I was a bit surprised that the rule checks didn’t flag the item when all the little green checks came up.  All’s well that ends well.  We removed the native client, reran the installation process and SQL Server 2008 R2 was successfully upgraded to SQL Server 2012.