Today I’m installing the developer version of SQL Server 2008 on my development station at home and thought I’d share a couple of points about it:
1) Before it will work on Windows 7 you have to install the SP 1 for SQL Server 2008 (obviously you still install SQL Server first, then the SP).
2) Before you install SQL Server, make sure you have installed SP 1 for Visual Studio.
If I had known these two facts before I started installing, I would have saved a bunch of time. The other bone-headed trick I pulled (besides not actually reading anything before beginning, because, hey, I’ve installed SQL Server lots of times…), was that when I downloaded the SP for SQL Server from MSDN I didn’t look as carefully as I thought at the name… I grabbed the ia64 instead of x64. Doh!
Remember, forewarned is four-armed or something. You don’t want to be caught with only two arms in the 64 bit Win 7 world of tomorrowlandville.