Its common belief that installation of SQL Server is very easy, just do *Next, Next * and installation would be complete. For resources on installing SQL Server 2008/R2/2012/2014 there are lot of good articles which you find in Suggested Readings section. This article tries to provide a simple solution to this problem, that many users face during installation of SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014 as well. SQL Server Setup and Upgrade forum you must have noticed some users creating a thread with error messages of 'Could not find database engine startup handle ' This article is about how to proceed when you get error message 'Could not find database engine startup handle ' while installing SQL Server 2008 R2/2012 or 2014.