Answer recommended by moderator
Such an error message often leads to a disk-related problem (Scenario 3):
I keep getting a database engine error when trying to install SQL Developer Server
Anjela Abu
0
Reputation points
👁 Screenshot 2025-11-02 003125
I have spent 4 hours trying to resolve this. I need to learn SQL desperately.
1 additional answer
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Erland Sommarskog 134.7K Reputation points • MVP • Volunteer Moderator
The message Wait on the Database Engine recovery handle failed is a generic error that means that SQL Server did not start when Setup wanted to run configuration steps. To understand why it did not start, you need to look in the SQL Server errorlog, which you find in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL16.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\LOG\ERRORLOG.
If you see a message about 256 misaligned reads, you are running into a known issue where Windows 11 for some disk drives reports a sector size that SQL Server does not cope with. Microsoft has published an article with workarounds for the problem.
If you don't see the message about misaligned reads, feel free to upload the errorlog here, so we can look at it. You will need to rename to ERRORLOG.txt for the forum software to accept it.
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Shruti Dhruv 875 Reputation points • Microsoft External Staff • Moderator
Hi Anjela Abu,
Just wanted to check if you got a chance to review the suggestion provided and whether that helped you resolve your query?
Thank You
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