posted 9/9/2010 by MarkGStacey - Views: [2156]
Sometimes, when installing PowerPivot Services, you may get the message "sharepoint availability check for existing farm" FAIL
Or "user account requirement for farm administrator"
Even though your user is in fact a Farm Admin, and a local admin.
As it turns out, the user needs sysadmin to the SQL machine as well,
Shutdown the Sharepoint services, and follow the technique below to make the user a SQL admin if it is not already
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/raulga/archive/2007/07/12/disaster-recovery-what-to-do-when-the-sa-account-password-is-lost-in-sql-server-2005.aspx
Simple, but *painful*