Install Sharepoint 2010 in a non Server OS

Do you want to develop Visual Web Parts for Sharepoint 2010 but you want it on your Development machine not the Server.  Currently the Installer that you download from Microsoft is set to be used for Windows Servers but with a little change on the installation files you can enable Sharepoint to run on your Windows 7 desktop.

To enable that you have to follow the steps below

1. Once you download the SharepointFoundation.exe you can extract the installation files by running this on the command prompt

c:YourDownloadFolderSharepointFoundation /extract:c:SharepointFoundationFiles

Note do not use other extractor such as 7-Zip beacause you will get this error

“The language of this installation package is not supported by your system”

This happens as the folder structure will not be extracted correctly.

2. Now edit the config.xml in  c:SharepointFoundationFilesfilesSetupconfig.xml and add this line

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

inside the

<Configuration>

tag:

So the file will now look like

<Configuration>
  <Package Id="sts">
    <Setting Id="SETUPTYPE" Value="CLEAN_INSTALL"/>
  </Package>
  <DATADIR Value="%CommonProgramFiles%Microsoft SharedWeb Server Extensions14Data"/>
  <Logging Type="verbose" Path="%temp%" Template="Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Setup *.log"/>
  <Setting Id="UsingUIInstallMode" Value="1"/>
  <Setting Id="SETUP_REBOOT" Value="Never" />
  <Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/>
</Configuration>

3. Save the configuration file and your good to go.  All you need to do is install the prerequisites if you havent and run the c:SharepointFoundationFilesSetup.exe