Recently I had to Install SQL Server 2008 Standard on a cluster and our setup was giving error like  ‘Value cannot be null;Parameter=Connection’

This issue was fixed when I tried Slipstreaming. What is slipstreaming? This is a combination of all the patches to the initial install (RTM). When you copy newer files over older files a slipstream is formed.

Below are the steps, which I followed to fix the issue:

Steps :

1 . Copy original SQL Server 2008 source setup to c:\SQLServer2008_FullSP1

2. Extract service pack to SQLServer2008SP1-KB968369-x64-ENU.exe /x:c:\SQLServer2008_FullSP1\PCU

3. Copy Setup.exe and Setup.rll from the PCU extracted location to original source setup location

4. Copy all files not the folders, except the Microsoft.SQL.Chainer.PackageData.dll, in c:\SQLServer2008_FullSP1\PCU\<architecture> to C:\SQLServer2008_FullSP1 \<architecture> to update the original files.

5. Modify the defaultsetup.ini by adding PCUSOURCE=”{Full path}\PCU”,ie PCUSOURCE=”C:\SQLServer2008_FullSP1 \PCU”

6. Ran the setup

Cluster was build and there was no more errors.