I have been trying to install DNN on my development laptop with XP and SQL Server 2000 for about 2 dozen times. I have read all the other posts. I have tried one configartion after the other. I have tried everything from Connection Strings to other wierd configuration mixtures and "potions" that I have read in other posts. , I have read and followed the documentation. (hopefully I have interpreted it properly) --but to no avail. From the other posts, I know that I am not the only developer having troubles. I believe that probably as many people that have a successful install, there are probably 50 people that try and give up because they have other things to do with their time. I know that there are claims DNN's popularity, but can you imagine how popular it would be if there were many more successful installs. I am making a plea, ney a distress call for any of you sucessful brotheren or sisteren in the DNN domain that have had success with my hardware platform to please help by sharing your methods that worked for you. I would really like to join the ranks of the successful. I believe DNN can really help the development community. Some how I feel that I am not the only one who is dealing with this in quite disperation.  As I climb down from my soapbox, I'm on my way to give it another try. But in the mean time. Please Help.!!!!

   Hello hooligannes;

Thank you for taking an interest. I have seen other posts where you have helped many others. I am strengthened by your interest. I hope you can help me. So her goes. 

1.Which version are you using? DNN 3? / DNN 4? / Install? / Source? / Starter Kit?

I have tried 3.2 install, 4.0xx install, source and starter. I was able to get starter to install once with SQL express 2005 on port 3207only when I opened it and ran it from Studio 2005 Standard.  

2.Did you apply file permissions to the DNN directory? What did you do exactly?

Yep.... aspnet. checked the name. removed simple file sharing. gave full control to aspnet

3.Do you have a login in SQL for the userthat's added to web.config?

Yes. I added the new user to security, then to the users of the DotNetNuke database. I also tried sa sa. Since the SQL is on my XP laptop, there usually is no problems here. I also tried trusted_connection=yes with no pwd and uid.

4.What's your connectionstring?

<add name="SiteSqlServer" connectionString="Server=(local)1;Database=DotNetNuke;uid=dnnuser;pwd=test;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

But I also have done:

<add name="SiteSqlServer" connectionString="Server=D1SHWC51;Database=DotNetNuke;Trusted_connection=yes;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

And

<add name="SiteSqlServer" connectionString="Server=(local);Database=DotNetNuke;uid=sa;pwd=sa;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

5.What type of autentication are you using for SQL?

SQL

My latest error is

DotNetNuke Upgrade Error

The Assembly Version ( [ASSEMBLYVERSION] ) does not match the Database Version ( [DATABASEVERSION] )

ERROR: Could not connect to database.

An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.)

This tells me that my IIs working. But It just doesn't want to connect to the DB. I believe that's where the issue lies. I've many other apps on my XP laptop that I have developed. It just seems to be this one that has the problem. I tried to strip down the web config (on a previous attempt that I wiped) but that didn't work because there are so many depandcies. Any way, I hope something I've said will trigger a "oh yeah, I know what you need to do" response. At this point I have very little pride. I do hate to admit that this has reduced me to rubble. Let me know what you come up with.

Thanks

I ran into this problem also.  After many days of focused effort I finally traced thing back to a web.config file that was located in the root of my inetpub/wwwroot folder.

The way I found this was by going to my IIS Service Manager and did a right mouse click and properties on my Default Website.  Then I went to the ASP.NET tab and made sure that it we using the 2.0.xxx framework.   I then did an edit and noticed that I had all kinds of entries that I did not need.

I attempted to remove these entries and could not so I traced where these settings were coming from and found the web.config file in my root folder.  This was causing all kinds of issues for my installation. 

I removed the web.config from my inetpub/wwwroot folder and restarted my system.  This allowed my DNN 4 web.config clearance to be read by my site.

Take a look at your ASP.NET tab for your site settings and verify that all of the settings are what you think they should be.   Once I did this I was golden...

---

Chris