I'm at the start of a application migration from Win2003/SQL2005 to Win2008/SQL2008 and trying to install SQL Server 2008 R2 with the SQL Agent and database engine using a domain account that has a space in the password. 

And its just not working.  I keep getting the generic "The credentials you provided for the SQL Server Agent service are invalid.  To continue, provide a valid account and password for the SQL Server Agent service".  

I can't find any documentation about password requirements for service accounts in SQL2008 and this account/password is working fine in the current production SQL2005.
So I'm wanting to confirm if this is the cause of the problem or not.


There's no problems with authentication against the domain - using another account that doesn't contain a space works fine.

Anyone seen this before?  

And lets not start on WHY we were given a password containing a space in the first place...