I finally solved my problems by manually installing DNN 4.5.5 on my local webserver (IIS5) and to the default SQL Server Express. I followed Mitchell Sellers's article at http://www.mitchelsellers.com/Blogs/tabid/54/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/119/Installing-DotNetNuke-455-Locally.aspx to the dot. It worked after some initial hiccups. Initially I kept getting "site unavailable" errors, but fixed that by setting "Script Access" in IIS. Then I had problems connecting to the database and had to tweak my connection strings to set the server name to ".\SQLExpress" and was able to connect. I still kept getting errors about site unavailable and then figured out that when I typed in the URL in the article into my IE first time, it gave me the site unavailable error. But when I selected that same URL again and clicked enter, it installed fine and allowed me to access my first ever basic portal in DNN. Yeah!! One whole week of heartburn and finally some progress!!

I still have no idea why the default install options (typical and custom) in the VWD starter kit keep hanging while installing the DB scripts. I hope someone will recognize this as a common problem and figure a way to fix it. The convenience of creating a DNN portal from VS.Net is tremendous.

Regards

Raj