I’ve spent few days trying to get version 4.9.4 and 5.1.1 working under XP Professional and using SQL 2005 express edition. Both XP and SQL and all the updates applied and the machine all version of the .net Framework to 3.5 SP1 installed.
It took much longer than expected, but I eventually got everything working. I’ve put this note here to help others avoid some of the issues I found.
Anyway here is what I found.
Despite lots of post on the web about the ‘flakiness’ of the distributions I found this not to be the case. They worked as described. Obviously the instructions must be followed exactly. The test connection options are particularly useful to prevent problems.
My first attempt (and an embarrassing number of subsequent attempts) yielded bizarre results. Especially with the 4.9.4 release, it would install and appear to work, but some of the basic functions (like adding a new page) simply did nothing. There were script error and problems with the web.config file.
These sort of suggested the presence of the .net Framework 3.5 SP1 (or some other Microsoft update) might be causing the distributions real problems.
I fixed all these issues by using Visual Studio 2008. I created the web site as per the install instructions, then before executing the default.aspx page, I opened the dotnetnuke site (Fileàopen), changed the Target Framework to 3.5, rebuilt the web (BuildàRebuild web site), published the web (BuildàPublish Web Site) and executed the default.aspx page. (I’m a little uncertain about this solution as changing the Framework could well introduce subtle problems I yet to encounter.)
I also fixed the 4.9.4 problems by creating a Virtual PC and installing XP SP3, added the .net Framework 2.0 and SQL 2005 express editions and then found the installation succeeded without incident.
Along the way I found a couple of other things that might be useful.
Do not try XP SP2 and SQL 2005 express in a Virtual PC. The install of SQL will fail and cause the virtual PC to reboot continuously. Should you find yourself in this position you can recover by starting in safe mode and disabling the SQL Server VSS Writer service, rebooting the Virtual PC in normal mode and upgrading to SP3 and then installing SQL.
Release 4.9.4 requires IE8 to be run with compatibility view on, otherwise the menu do strange things.
Running the project under Visual Studio 2008 in debug mode requires the DEBUG verb to be added to the AllowVerbs part of the UrlScan.ini file. Simply removing it from the DenyVerbs part is not sufficient.
I hope this saves you some time.
If I’ve done something that causes really problems please let me know, soon. If I find problems I’ll post them here.