SharePoint Foundation 2010 on Windows 7

This MSDN article describes in detail how to install SharePoint Foundation 2010 for development purposes on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. The purpose of this post is to focus on the SharePoint installation on Window 7 only and clear out all the details for the other operating systems.

1. Download SharePoint Foundation 2010 x64 for free. Note that there is no x86 version of SharePoint Server, so don’t bother setting it up if you have a 32-bit machine.
2. Create a new folder “C:\SharePointFiles” and copy “SharePointFoundation.exe” to it.
3. Start command prompt, change directory to C:\SharePointFiles and run the following command to extract the “SharePointFoundation.exe” to C:\SharePointFiles
   SharePointFoundation.exe /extract:C:\SharePointFiles
4. Open C:\SharePointFiles\files\Setup\config.xml, add a new <Setting> tag under the <Configuration> element, then save the file. Make sure you copy the below element as is since all of the text in the configuration file is case-sensitive.
   <Setting Id=”AllowWindowsClientInstall” Value=”True”/>
5. Install the following Prerequisites:
   • Microsoft FilterPack 2.0: C:\SharePointFiles\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\FilterPack\FilterPack.msi
   • Microsoft Sync Framework: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=141237
   • SQL Server Native Client: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=123718
   • Windows Identity Foundation: http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/7/2/D72FD747-69B6-40B7-875B-C2B40A6B2BDD/Windows6.1-KB974405-x64.msu
   • WCF Hotfix (KB971831): http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=166231
   • ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to enable REST-based data services: http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/3/C/13CBF47A-15D0-4237-ABFC-ED6E3E3A6520/Windows6.1-KB976127-v6-x64.msu
6. Enable the required windows features by running this batch file: http://cid-e38f9fc6490b29d9.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Scripts/EnableSPWinFeatures.bat
7. Restart your computer to complete the changes that you made to Windows Features.
8. Install SharePoint 2010
   • Run Setup.exe under C:\SharePointFiles
   • Select standalone (Windows 7 can’t be used for production deployments of SharePoint 2010 and it’s recommended that you use Standalone only)
   • After the installation is complete, you will be prompted to start the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard.
     
9. After a SharePoint solution (.wsp file) is deployed, it recycles the application pool. To improve the initial page load times, set the optimizeCompilations property of the <compilation> tag in your web.config file (C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80\web.config) to true.
   <compilation optimizeCompilations=”true”>

SharePoint Designer 2010 is also free and can help you better design your SharePoint site(s). You can download it here.