Thank you, Thank you, THANK YOU HENSON!!!, for making this easy to understand Installation Guide.

I had been struggling with my installation for quite some time, when I found this posting yesterday.

A special thank you, for stating that the order of the changes is irrelevant. The original instructions made it seem like it was obligatory to make everything in the right sequence.

Couldn't beleive something so simple, could be made so hard-to-understand, when following the "official" Installation Guide, but it could!

So, I followed your instructions and pointed my browser to localhost/dnn/ and received an error saying: "Error, the database already exists" or something like that.

Then I thought, OK - another misleading instruction. But... when thinking again, I found that your instruction didn't mention anything about changing the "database-owner" parameter in the web.config-file. So, I removed that change, and voilá, everything worked perfect.

Maybe one addition to your instruction could be: "DO NOT CHANGE THE DATABASE-OWNER SETTING"

My configuration is as follows, and though it is not the same as yours, it still works!

Windows XP Professional - SP2,

IIS 5.1 (delivered with XP),

SQL Express (SQL Server 9.0.1399),

MS SQL Server Management Studio Express. Version 9.00.2047.00,

ASP.NET version 2.0.50727.

Thank you again from an impressed HTML-hacker in Sweden (The country with Polar Bears on the streets, just about a 1000 miles north of the cheese-making fellows in the country in the Alpes called Switzerland) 

I have the the same setup as you, and I had a devil of a time installing. What works for a local sqlexpress etc. setup definitely does not work on a full-blown IIS MSSQL server 2003 setup. I finally did get it somewhat working, using the windows authority method, but I don't know enough about the security implications - so I wasn't comfortable going live with it.

Then I had trouble installing a module.... and gave up and un-installed the whole works.

I intend to have another go at it, but I don't think I know enough about all the bits and pieces that must work together. I do know some them, however, and I'd like to try this again but using the "buddy system" with someone who perhaps knows the security model a bit better and how it works with mssql/iis.

Anyone with a windows 2003 server (enterprise version), IIS and MSSQL want to collaborate on this? My goal is to eventually have .netnuke running on a couple of gunea-pig websites that are managed by non-technical people, and then do some visual studio 2005 development/enhancements against those websites that they will then use and test. Well... that's the current plan anyhow, and somewhat fluid.... learning as I go.