Hello Tony,

Yes, I was able to make the combination of the following work. 

• IIS 5.1
• ASP.NET 2.0
• SQL Server 2005 Express
• Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
• DotNetNuke 4.0.3
• XP Media Center (Contains IIS)

Most of my efforts were spent simply configuring the combination of components correctly.  To do this, it was necessary to become somewhat familiar with each, and to troubleshoot each problem encountered.  I relied on DotNetNuke, MSDN and Visual Studio Express for the necessary help documentation.

If you are new to the above components, I suggest the following:

• Ensure that IIS is operational be implementing and testing a very simple web page.
• Create a simple ASP.NET 2.0 web site using Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition. 
• Follow these instructions: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/tour/vs2005_guided_tour/WebDev/WebDev/webdev3.htm
• FYI, I found that SQL Server 2005 Express  needed to be configured using a "instpubs.sql".  In reviewing my notes, I could not find the link to the required instructions.
• Create the DotNetNuke 4.0.3 site based on ASP.NET 2.0.  The only problem I found here was ambiguity in the instructions relating to web.config modifications.  The instructions say "check" but they should really be "add" two lines.
• Add these lines (leave the existing lines as is).
•      <add name="DotNetNuke" connectionString="Data Source=.\SQLExpress;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|Database.mdf;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

•     <add key="DotNetNuke" value="Data Source=.\SQLExpress;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|Database.mdf;" />

There was never a problem with DotNetNuke 4.0.3 itself, just making sure everything else was configured properly.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Regards,

 

Wayne

 

Your problem is not a DNN issue, it's a configuration issue, most likely with IIS. Do you have a lot of IIS experience? Check to make sure you have anonymous access granted in IIS. For good measure, I suggest going into the advanced security properties of your DNN root and replacing all child object permissions. While in this dialog, also reset the owner on all child objects to the Administrators group.

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Michael Flanakin | Microsoft Consulting Services
www.michaelflanakin.com

I was having this problem and it turned out that the portalalias table had the incorrect entry. /install had been concatonated on the correct url. Once that was corrected I was cooking with gas! Hope this may help someone and save them a day of head scratching!!!