Installing SharePoint Server 2010 on Windows 7 x64

Introduction

If you wanted to install WSS v3 / MOSS 2007 on your client OS, you had to use all sorts of tricks and tools.
There was this tool from Bamboo Solutions.

But now, you can simply install SharePoint Server 2010 on your client OS just by modifying a config file.

Requirements

• Process Explorer (Download)
• SharePoint Server 2010 Beta installer (I used en_sharepoint_server_2010_beta_x64_x16-19249.exe)
• Windows 7 x64 as client OS

Installation

Ok, let's start up the SharePoint installer and you'll get the following error when trying to install SharePoint:

It seems that SharePoint Server 2010 is only compatible with Windows Server 2008 x64. But it's not.
Ok, start up Process Explorer while the installer splashscreen is running and you'll see the following:

So it seems that the installer was unpacked in C:\Program Files (x86)\MSECache\oserver2010. You can browse to that directory now.

• Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\MSECache\oserver2010
• Go to the Files folder
• Go to the Setup folder
• Open config.xml
• Add the following line before the closing </configuration> tag

<Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/>

Once you've modified the config file, you'll be able to install SharePoint Server 2010 on your Windows 7 machine!
Now you can have your development environment without even dual booting with Server 2008.

Enjoy!

History

• 20^th November, 2009: Initial post

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)