It has been months I’ve been trying to install the latest version of DNN onto my work machine. I’m running IIS7 on Windows 7 with SQL Server 2008 connecting to our company’s test server. I’ve gotten the latest version of DNN from the site (DotNetNuke_Community_05.04.01_Source.zip) not to mention 05.03.01 in both source & StarterKit, & I’ve tried using the MikeVDM.com install wizard, as well as numerous step by step guides. Most of these don’t deal with my setup environment (DNN5, SQL Server, IIS7, etc), & every one of these has produced their own brand of errors.

I’m the first at my company to (attempt to) install DNN5/community & the first on Windows 7. As I said, there’s probably not an error that I haven’t gotten. I’m getting: ” HTTP Error 403.14 – Forbidden: The Web server is configured to not list the contents of this directory.” But we all know if I change the feature to show contents, then that will just display the file directory of my site, & not install DNN to my localhost.

I’ve had the install succeed somehow to get to the point of DNN beginning the localhost install, only to get two “An error has occurred” messages, & on these I can look to the URL & see within the parameter strings “object reference not set to an instance of an object” similar to: “object-reference-not-set-to-an-instance-of”… (sorry, but I didn’t save this exact string, & cannot reproduce this now ) but no other hint of the issue.

It’s no secret that the install of DNN is volatile, with db, users, permissions, Active Directory, security & a host of other specs needing to be set exactly, but I’m wondering if anyone else has been able to get DNN5+/Community installed with IIS7 on Windows 7 using SQL Server 2008 & if there’s any idiotsyncrasies that can be passed to get this working in my environment?

Here is my connection string, specifics changed to protect the idiot:

<connectionStrings>

    <add name="SiteSqlServer" connectionString="Data Source=testSQLSvr;Initial Catalog=DNNdb;User ID=DNNUser;Password=YourPwd" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

  </connectionStrings>

  <appSettings>

    <add key="SiteSqlServer" value="Data Source=testSQLSvr;Initial Catalog=DNNdb;User ID=DNNUser;Password=YourPwd" />

A step-by-step or checklist for this type of install would be really helpful, even posts to previous threads, any & all would be appreciated.