So my blog post last night has generated a few requests for discussing the issues I ran into in a forum thread, so here it is. :)

You can read the blog, or in summary

I tried setting up DNN on a fresh Windows 7 Virtual machine using the Web Platform Installer but ran into issues. When I finally got SQL Express installed DNN then failed to run, more so IIS failed to load the ASP.NET application. So I gave up and scrapped the VM. Well tonight I started a new VM, we'll see how well this works now.

So instead of using the SQL Express bootstrapper which would try to download the necessary information from MS during install, I downloaded the complete download for Express/Tools and SQL Express installed fine.

I setup the DNN site, setup permissions for the Network Service user, access the site, and I get the same problem as yesterday.

So now to try one more thing before bed.

Some not to useful info from MS about running apppoolidentity

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd378907.aspx

And a more useful thread discussing this on IIS.net

https://forums.iis.net/p/1154612/1891074.aspx#1891074

This is probably going to have some major implications for DNN installations going forward.