Use “NETWORK SERVICE” to Start SQL Server Service in 2014 on Local Computer

I had a really hard time getting the SQL Server 2014 install to succeed.  I spent days on it.  I uninstalled all my earlier SQL Server Editions, which is a tedious process because you need to uninstall a lot of different components in specific order.  The SQL Server 2014 install then succeeded, but the SQL Server service would not start.

Event viewer showed this error when trying to start SQL Server:
Initializing the FallBack certificate failed with error code: 1, state: 20, error number: 0.

I tried configuring the SQL Server Service to start using a different windows account, but that did not work either, although I was on the right track.  I did need to change the account used by SQL Server, but I needed to do it during the install process.  So, I uninstalled all the SQL Server components again, then ran the install again.

Apparently the default SQL Server service account is not working on my Windows 7 machine, so I need to pick a different account, and that account needed to be “Network Service”.  I tried several other promising looking accounts such as “Administrator”, “LOCAL SERVICE”, and “SERVICE”, but only “NETWORK SERVICE” from my local machine security group worked.

Don’t do this on production servers, it is not the best security choice.

Select NETWORK SERVICE to get SQL Server 2014 to work