Installing Sharepoint 2010 RTM on Windows 7

 So, the news of Sharepoint being RTM’ed excited me as much as it would excite any above average and ardent follower of the product. I have been working quite a bit on the beta version. Learning my way around, getting trained and all that!

The one-stop link for Sharepoint 2010 beta installation was http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx.

1. So, before starting the installation of the RTM version, I un-installed Foundation Server 2010 beta and Sharepoint Server 2010 beta.
2. Downloaded and extracted the Sharepoint 2010 RTM from my MSDN subscription and extracted it into a folder.
3. Like any installer/ developer just double clicked on the setup.exe.
4. Boom it of course failed saying operating system not supported! So I backtracked and looked posted on forums and got the above link as response.

I wondered a bit as to why Microsoft choose not to provide sufficient details in the accompanying readme. The readme with the RTM download contained just the below:

And when you click on here, it takes you to office link with huge list of known issues and workaround. Did not find useful for installation of Sharepoint at all.

Like a responsible citizen, logged on to connect.microsoft.com and logged a suggestion about the documentation- complaining about the helplessness of the same.

And btw, all this while Foundation Server was still an unknown, I mean the download was not present alongside the Sharepoint 2010 on the msdn subscribers download list. Had to hunt for it in the forums.

So downloaded that and installed it by following the instructions on the link 1 above.

Installation was successful and configuration failed- boom L

I pondered a bit, searched the net, but finally applied common-sense. Since I had older web sites (web applications if you will- Sharepoint jargon) from Sharepoint 2010 beta installations, I just went ahead and renamed them with “old_” and ran the configuration wizard again from start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 Products -> Configuration wizard.

It worked! J. Am not sure if it was common sense or beta-sense. Some beta uninstall/ cleanup should have helped here.

So, after Foundation Server successful installation, I went ahead and ran the setup.exe from command prompt for Sharepoint 2010.

The installation was successful

So, clicked on close to go ahead with the configuration wizard.

Bingo! It was successful!