Situation: you finished installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7. You have ran the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard. You are finally inside Central Administration 2010 and was surprised that creating new Web Applications is disabled:

What the heck?? You thought you were admin! You check the Farm Administrators list and your account is there. So, what gives??

Windows User-Access-Control is getting in the way. Although your account is Farm admin, because of UAC, you’re still not permitted to do stuff in Central Admin like create new Web apps. The fix? Disable UAC and reboot Windows. After reboot, you should be able to create new Web apps:

Caution: after you have created your Web apps and Site collections in Central Admin, turn on the UAC again and reboot. Turning off UAC for good is not recommended even if it’s annoying.  If you permanently turn off UAC, malware might have a chance to install in your PC (you are admin, no prompts for system mods—yikes!!)

The hardest part in installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 is the installation process itself and then configuring the Complete installation on a single-server of the SharePoint Config Database while using local accounts. Once the SharePoint Content DB and the SharePoint Admin Content Databases are created, you can now run psconfigui.exe, SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard.

When you run the PSCONFIGUI, since you already configured the SharePoint config database, will start-off at the following step of the Configuration Wizard. Notice that my database-server and database-name have already been pre-populated. Click Next.

 

You get to specify additional information such as Authentication provider (choose NTLM, especially if you do not have domain controller  in your network). You can also choose the port number where Central Admin will run.

Click Next until it runs the actual  configuration of the Central Admin:

Once the Wizard is finished, run your Central Admin. If things were installed and configured correctly, you should be able to launch Central Admin:

Here are some of the other errors that I received while creating my SharePoint 2010 environment in Windows 7.

New-SPConfigurationDatabase: Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.IdentityModel, Version 3.5.0.0. The Power Shell looks like the following when you’re running New-SPConfigurationDatabase to configure your SP database for the first time:

The fix: Install Microsoft Identity Framework to address this problem.

New-SPConfigurationDatabase: The user does not exist or is not unique. You get to the point in the New-SPConfigurationDatabase command-let that asks you for the Farm Credentials. You didn’t fully qualify the username with the domain or computer name.

 

To fix this, simply make sure that the user account you are specifying for the Farm Credentials is fully-qualified with the domain-name or, if using local accounts, the computer name. Example: “macbookpro\gabe”.

New-SPConfigurationDatabase :  Unknown error (0×80005000) At line: 1 char:20. + New-SPConfigurationDatabase <<<< + CategoryInfo    : InvalidData

 

This one frustrated the heck out of me. I configured my Macbook Pro already but I was installing SharePoint 2010 on another PC(has Intel Core i7 processor) in my office when I got this message. I thought the second pass-through would be easier. I already know I must follow every-step of the SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 Development Workstation Guide.  So, how can I possibly still mess it up?? You see, I’d get past the Passphrase question and it would process the command for a while and spit out the error message only at the very end. When I look at my SQL Server, the Config database is created but the “SharePoint Admin Content” database has not been created yet. I manually added the user-account to sysadmin group in SQL. I made the  Windows login Local Admin. I serviced-pack the SQL instance at least twice. Still the InvalidData error message like above. I uninstalled SharePoint 2010 and re-installed it. When I uninstalled the entire SharePoint 2010 (remember, I was aiming for the “Complete” installation option), I reinstalled the second time just using the “Stand-Alone” install. I was thinking, this sucks, having to use SQL Express because I’m going for Stand-Alone install. I finished the Stand-Alone installation. I go ahead and try to configure it and the psconfigui.exe (SP Product Configuration Wizard) and bam—STILL an error! But this time, the error message was more helpful—it told me that IIS 6 is not installed. I look at my installed Windows 7 features and sure enough, IIS 6 wasn’t installed yet! I was pretty sure I ran everything on the checklist and I couldn’t have missed anything. Obviously, I missed something, and this something was the required Windows Features that must be turned on. So I installed II 6 feature on my Windows 7 and the Stand-Alone configuration worked and I saw the Central Admin. If you get this Unknown error (0×80005000), check your installed Windows Features and make sure you have IIS 6 Management Console installed.

 

Okay, after going through the stand-alone install and was made to enable IIS6, I uninstalled SharePoint 2010, again! Why did I uninstall it? Because it was installed using Stand-Alone install which uses SQL Server Express.  This final time, I was determined to make the Complete installation (can add servers to farm) work. I installed the SharePoint 2010. I ran Power Shell and ran the New-SPConfigurationDatabase command-let and was able to create the configuration database. Yay!!!