I just wanted to drop a quick note about the installation of the SharePoint Server 2010 Beta released yesterday on MSDN.

I setup a new virtual machine in my Hyper-V server as a new dedicated 2010 Beta server.  I installed Office 2010 beta and SharePoint Designer 2010 with no issues whatsoever.  SharePoint Server provided to be a little less helpful.  It wouldn't be SharePoint if it didn't make me work for it!

I want to drop a quick warning in case you run into the 2 issues I had.

1.  The prerequisite installs kept failing because it was unable to install PowerShell V2.  This boils down to PowerShell V2 refusing to install if V1 exists (although this took a little digging below the surface), which is mysteriously installed on my vanilla Server 2008 Standard via a random KB / Windows Update.  Fine, except you can't find the specific KB to therefore uninstall it.  It turns out to be a piece of cake after running in circles.  Use the server manager "Features" to remove PowerShell V1 and voila, you should be all set.  The traditional methods for remove programs yielded no results.

2.  The SharePoint Configuration Wizard told me that my SQL Server was not up to date.  The warning made it sound like I needed SP1 for SQL 2008, which I had not installed.  I went ahead and got that completed and the error/warning persisted.  If you read carefully the message also mentions a specific KB which has a ton of hotfixes embedded within them.  I just downloaded both files referenced in the hotfixes from that KB and installed them.

In all I installed SP1 three times with the various KB bundles, but after that the installation went smooth.  My machine is now sitting at the Central Admin configuration screen while Visual Studio 2010 beta installs.

I will try to report back on any hiccups / issues with the CA configuration.  So far it's not too bad!

I hope this helps,

-Ryan

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