The whole motivation to install SP 2010 server on my home laptop is to learn this product and experiment. It turned out to be a bumpy ride, and worth of noting down the steps. Besides, I am a strong believer in knowledge sharing. :)
First, there is a very good online reference to help you start the fun – "Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008" http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx). In this document, it didn’t mention the specific version of Windows 7 x 64 as the required operation system. I assumed that Windows 7 Home Premium x 64 will do, and in the end, it worked. Also, please take every prerequisite step listed in this reference seriously.
Couple things to point out that deviated my experience from this reference.
1) It mentioned about that "Chart Controls" and "SQL Server Analysis Services – ADOMD.net" are not required if you are going to install SharePoint Foundation 2010. This didn’t work for me. I downloaded SharePoint Foundation 2010 and skipped these two, and I still got the error - "Set up is unable to proceed due the following error(s): This product requires Windows Server 2008 SP2 and above…". After I installed these two prerequisites, and ran the setp.exe, instead of the SharePointFoundation.exe, I finally saw the lovely installation page.
2) Another thing that worth of mentioning is that – IIS 7 on Windows 7 Home Premium does not have Windows Authentication and Digest Authentication to allow you select as shown in this online reference. I thought this could be the roadblock, and it turned out to be fine (so far). :)
Please also be aware that the enterprise edition allow you add excel service, access service and visio services and etc… comparing to the standard one. You may want to compare two versions to understand which one fits your needs better - http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/pages/editions-comparison.aspx
On the installation first page, I chose to install “Stand along”, instead of “Server Farm”. Then, towards the end of the installation, I got a lovely error by digging into this log file – "SharePoint Server Setup.log" file in your appdata's temp folder – "…dbwrap.exe' failed with error code: -2068643839. Type: 8::CommandFailed.". Researched the internet, blogs and forums, and found this reference – http://sharepointjungle.com/2010/03/06/install-sharepoint-2010-on-windows-7/. I didn’t find the same registry entry mentioned in this article, however this reference gave me some hint that the error could be around the SQL server connections. What I did is to enable the SQL server browser. Then I re-ran the SharePoint installation in the repair mode. It no longer choked, and ran all the way to the end, and gave me a successful message finally. YEAH!
However, it is not working yet. I tried to open the SP admin central page, and got a blank page. I went back to google. It turned out that I needed to turn off site anonymous authentication and turn on basic authentication instead. After this, I finally saw the SharePoint Central Administration page with all the nice icons / pictures. It was Saturday 11:30 PM. My husband said that I – "looked like lost the entire day." Being a geek's husband, he is used to me pulling my hairs all day long starring at my computer. Lol.
In a few months, I was able to build SharePoint sites using PowerShell. It is much easier to have a reusable script at hand without repeating the lengthy process described above. :o)
