I'm not sure how I did it, but I somehow fixed the permissions. I created a new sql 2005 db and ran the wizard. It got me to the Install Host Portal page where you create an admin login and specify a portal. I took the defaults, added my pwd and recieved this msg:

Error Installing Portal:
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

I'm going to leave my page open and pray this post gets approved by an admin in a timely fashion and someone answers... I suppose I could create yet another database if need be. I'm sooo close.

There's a thunderstorm blowing through though so I may lose power. :(

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for trying. :-)

I actually did that a million times yesterday. You know what it was? Wait for it. It's pretty good. 

There's a reason the directions suggest you unzip the code in c:\dotnetnuke. Of course, I wasn't going to do that because the rest of my stuff is located in mydocuments/visual studio/websites.

Yeah, well. If you do that you then end up with an even deeper file structure - vstudio/websites/dnnsource4.5.5/website

It's too long. It apparently exceeds some kind of file length. So FINALLY it installed properly. I never could get it to install under Medium security. I had to comment that out as well.

Thanks for putting up with me. In the end, it's worth it. I was just about to walk away in frustration. I'm really glad I didn't.