I'm responsible for a web site, www.oaklandsymphonychorus.org, which currently runs on DNN 4.3.5.  I'd like to upgrade this site at least to 4.9.1 - I haven't had a chance to look at 5.0 yet.  I'd really appreciate answers to some fairly basic questions:

Our hosting provider has us running on ASP.NET 2.0, SQL Server 2000, and a version of IIS I haven't established yet - I think 6.0.

My first question is:  will 4.9.1 even run on this platform or do we need to upgrade ASP.NET, SQL server, and/or IIS on the hosting site?

My second question concerns setting up a test site on my Vista Home Premium laptop.  Ideally I'd like to install DNN 4.3.5 on the laptop, copy the production site and database to it, and then do the upgrade locally so I'll know what I might run into.  I've got the excellent "how to do it" links that have been published here, but - my laptop has IIS 7.0 (not enabled) and .NET framework 3.0 (only partly enabled).  And, of course, no SQL server at all.

Is there any point in my trying to bring up DNN 4.3.5 on IIS 7.0??  Will it run?  Same question about .NET 3.0 - will my old version run on it or do I have to download the 2.0 version? 

Finally, I'm not at all sure about SQL - I was going to try SQL Server Express but I'm not sure I can even get the 2000 version, and that's what we're using in production.

Many thanks for your advice - the setup is so old, I'm concerned about spending hours trying to get it working and then finding that it was impossible all along and everyone knew it but me.

Mike,

I got it put together, but I'm getting a database error I hope you can explain.  I installed Microsoft SQL Express 2005 on my laptop and I've worked through the install procedures at

http://www.adefwebserver.com/DotNetNukeHELP/DNN4_DevelopmentEnvironment/DNNDevelopmentWindowsVista.htm

With your suggestion to go to Classic Mode in IIS 7.0, I got DNN 4.3.5 installed, and when I tried to bring it up I immediately got this error:

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

ERROR: Could not connect to database.

The stored procedure 'dbo.GetPortalAliasByPortalID' doesn't exist. 

I have no idea what to do, I am the world's greenest SQL newbie - if this is some obvious stupid error that you recognize, I'd really appreciate some guidance.  Otherwise I'll start researching tomorrow...

 hedera

I'll look at the checklist, thank you, but I should emphasize that, although I got a DNN "upgrade error", I am not upgrading anything.  This is a new install.  It's a new install of a backleveled version, because I need to upgrade a backleveled site; but there was NO DNN installation on this computer until last night.