I’ve read and heard many places that the account you use to install SharePoint gets mystical powers that can’t really be explained.  I’ve always listened to that advice but never really understood why – until last week!

Let me backup for a second and explain what I’m talking about.  When you go through the SharePoint installation process, once you’ve started the started the process the first account you’ll be asked to enter is the account that SharePoint will use to access SQL.  This isn’t the account I’m referring to – the account I’m referring to is the account that you are logged into Windows Server with during the installation. 

The scenario I ran into is very typical, Admin logs into Windows Server with his or her own account (that has administrator rights on the server) and then proceeds to perform the installation.  On the surface, this will work fine in most cases.  The installation will complete and SharePoint will load.  Everyone will be happy.  For now….

In my case, I was helping to configure an environment that was originally setup several months back.  For whatever reason things were working correctly and it was decided it would just be faster to uninstall and reinstall to fix the problem.  I sat down and began the uninstall process from Add/Remove programs and was surprised when it failed.  Became even more frustrated when it failed another three times!  Turns out I was trying to do the uninstall using the SP_Admin account, however the installation was done using one of the network admin’s accounts.  So I went over, asked the guy to login and tried the uninstall one more time.  Poof!!  Worked immediately.

In my case, I was lucky.  The administrator was still around.  But what if he no longer worked there?  Maybe he was a consultant or won the lottery?  I might have been staring a very messy uninstall right in the face.

Just remember, the account you are logged in with during your SP install makes a big difference!