Issue Resolution Journey during SharePoint 2010 Installation on Windows 7

While Installing SharePoint Foundation 2010, I encountered a failed installation error and it pointed me out to go through the log files.

While having a look at the log files, I landed on a file at this location C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\Summary.txt

When I scrolled towards the end of the file, the below InnerException was displayed.

Inner exception type: Microsoft.SqlServer.Configuration.SqlEngine.ValidationException
        Message: 
                The system database file master.mdf already exists in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\Data\MSSQL10.SHAREPOINT\MSSQL\DATA.

Towards resolving the issue, I renamed this file -> un-installed SharePoint Foundation 2010 and tried installing again. This time I hit another error quite similar to the above but with one exception, "the file name this time was master.ldf"

Inner exception type: Microsoft.SqlServer.Configuration.SqlEngine.ValidationException
        Message: 
                The system database file master.ldf already exists in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\Data\MSSQL10.SHAREPOINT\MSSQL\DATA.

By this I understood that it would do this for all the other system databases available in this folder.

I went one folder up to ..\MSSQL and renamed the folder DATA -> un-installed SharePoint Foundation 2010 and re-installed again. Guess what ....... I was in smiles.

SharePoint created another folder called DATA and created the database and log files a-fresh again.

Quite straight forward, but worth taking a space on my blog. Hope it helps!!

SharePoint 2010 Products and Configuration Wizard Error

Operating System : Windows Server 2008 R2 (all important updates installed)
Installing : SharePoint Foundation 2010 Standalone (with SQL Server 2008 Express SP1) in one box.

Steps successfully performed:

• I installed all pre-requisites using SharePointFoundation.exe
• I restarted the Server
• While running SharePoint 2010 Products and Configuration Wizard, I received the following errors

After resolving the above error I received

Here is the right approach

• Before running ShaerPoint 2010 Products and Configuration Wizard, Right-click on the folder %commonprogramfiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14 click Properties from the context menu and then select the Security tab > select Edit
• On the Permissions for 14 dialog click Add… and enter Network Service in the Enter the object names to select and then click OK.
• On the Permissions for 14 dialog select Full Control under Permissions for NETWORK SERVICE and click OK twice.

The second screenshot above is faced when you don't have the Cumulative Update 2 installed for SQL Server 2008 Express. Download and Install SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64