Tip: Solving “Restart Required” problem installing SQL Server Express x64 on Windows 7

There’s a bug in the current build of SQL Server Express which prevents it from being installed on a Windows 7 machine (the pre-installation checks will fail on a “restart required” link. Restarting, obviously, doesn’t fix this.

The solution:
Go to Start > Cmd > RegEdit and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager

In the right-side pane, double-click on the key “PendingFileRenameOperations” and clear any values in there. Exit RegEdit.

Then, just re-run the SQL Express intaller and all should be fine.