First, let me clarify the “killing kittens” statement.  A couple of years back, I had a chance of attending a sessions presented by Todd Klindt and Shane Young on SharePoint Installation and to raise awareness of how little control, and not to say the limitations, of installing in Standalone mode, they would state “Everytime a SharePoint Standalone Installation happens, God kills a kitten”.  Ok, now on to the rest of the purpose of the post.

Assumption:  SQL Server 2008 R2 is already installed on the system

Installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 is not for any other purpose than development, but I did not want multiple instances of SQL Server running on my system.  I wanted a little more control over that.  And also to take advantage of SQL Server 2008 R2, and not Express.

What are the main things to know?  To start, install the prerequisites.  Here is the list to do that, the items with an asterisk are no longer needed if you have SP1 for Windows 7 (or Windows 2008 R2 for that matter).

The other part, when installing SharePoint 2010 (either Foundation or Server), for your setup you will select Server Farm installation and then Complete.  No Standalone here.

Once the setup completes, uncheck the box to run SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard, and click close.

Here is the fun part, now you will open the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell, the steps for this are:

1) Go to Start
2) Expand All Programs
3) Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products, then Right-click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell, and click Run As Administrator.
4) Click OK on the UAC prompt.

Ok, now the tool is open, we will use some SharePoint 2010 PowerShell CmdLets here.  Actually, just one.

1) Type New-SpConfigurationDatabase, press enter
2) At the DB Name prompt, I used SharePoint_W7_Config.
3) At the DB Server prompt, type your SQL Instance Name.
4) You will be prompted for system credentials, even if using Windows 7, provide in the following form:   <computer_name>\<account name>, and then provide the password and click ok.
5) Last you will be prompted for a Passphrase.

Your goal here is to see the PowerShell prompt again (mind you it will take a few minutes to complete), once you see the prompt again you will need to:

1) Go to Start
2) Expand All Programs
3) Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products, then click SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard.
4) Once it opens up, click Next at the initial screen.
5) Click Yes at the Dialog stating it needs to restart some services.
6) Accept Defaults to not Disconnect from the Farm, click Next.
7) The screen now will allow you to modify settings for the Port on which Central Admin will run, if you want to change it, check the box next to Specify Port Number, I assigned 9999 to mine.  Accept defaults for Security Configuration.  Click Next.
8) Review your settings, and click Next.
9) This will now provision the items needed, once it completes, click Finish.

After all this is done you will go into Central Administration, and will be presented with the option of running the Farm Configuration Wizard and such, then it will be needed to create a site and all the items associated with that process.
I will provide details to the Farm Configuration Wizard and the process of creating a Web Application and a Site Collection in a later post.