SharePoint 2007 on Windows Server 2008
As the release of W2K8 creeps closer and closer, many IT professionals are increasingly experimenting with the beta versions and retail candidates of the latest release of Microsoft’s Server OS. Suffice to say, I am one of these ‘it’ professionals, so off I went on my mission to install MOSS2K7 on my newly installed Windows Server 2008 Virtual Machine. Not surprisingly my enthusiasm and excitement was very short lived, as briefly after mounting my MOSS2K7 image I received the infamous “this version is not compatible” error message which reminded me immediately of the fun I had the first time I installed Windows Vista. Nevertheless, after some research I discovered that I am not the only ‘it’ professional who was interested in experimenting with W2K8 and MOSS2K7, and as a result I have come across a solution that will allow MOSS2K7 to be installed on a W2K8 Server.
The following steps will outline how this is done:
Requirements:
· MOSS2K7 with Service Pack 1
· Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) with Service Pack 1
In order to install MOSS2K7 on W2K8 we need to package MOSS2K7 with SP1 and WSS with SP1, this is known as a ‘slipstream’ installation. The reason for doing this is that our friends at Microsoft have not released a fully packaged version for W2K8 yet. However there is a way to get around this and fortunately it is not that complex.
Firstly, if you do not already have them, the you must download MOSS2K7 with SP1 and WSS with SP1, these can be found here:
MOSS2K7 SP1: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ad59175c-ad6a-4027-8c2f-db25322f791b&DisplayLang=en
Secondly, you now need to extract the executables, and in order to do this we need to enter the following command:
C:\Wssv3sp1-kb936988-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:c:\wsssp1extract
C:\Officeserver2007sp1-kb936984-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:c:\mosssp1extract
Note: C:\ represents the drive that you have downloaded the executables too.
Thirdly, Once the Service Pack executables have been extracted you need to copy the extracted contents to the /Updates folder on the MOSS2K7 CD. The easiest way to do this is to extract your MOSS2K7 iso image onto your file system and simply copy the contents of both c:\wsssp1extract and c:\mosssp1extract into the \Updates folder, the key here is not to use any subfolders and ensure that you copy both the MOSS2K7 and the WSS Service packs to the same location.
Thats it! You are now ready to install MOSS2K7 onto a W2K8 Server, thats if you can get SQL 2005 to install ; - )