Today I ran into some serious trouble at a customer . I had to install SQL server 2005 for a System Center Essentials installation.Every time I installed the SQL server it just would quit with a funny error : “There was an unexpected failure during the setup wizard”. What the hell ? Doing some investigation , it seems to be a know bug when your sources aren't coming from the original CD's.If you are downloading them from the MVLS site , you will run into this issue one day . This problem...(read more)

Read the complete post at http://scug.be/blogs/sccm/archive/2009/01/12/error-message-when-you-install-sql-server-2005-there-was-an-unexpected-failure-during-the-setup-wizard-error-1603.aspx