SharePoint 2010 on Windows8. Sure why not....

How to deal with the dilemma of a new Windows 8 PC and the need to stay a productive SharePoint dev for your customer's???  Get SharePoint 2010 working on your Windows 8 PC, simple as that or it would seem.  Luckily like most things these days I was not the first person to try this or blog about the scenarios and gotchas.  Thank goodness for that new fangled internet thingy.  Below are a couple of blogs that I used to get my environment up and running.  There were a couple of issues that I encountered that were not identified or addressed by these posts and I have provided those as well.  Good luck to all and who needs a Start button anyways!

John Livingston has a good post and a great script for updating IIS on your Windows 8 machine:

http://johnlivingstontech.blogspot.ca/2011/09/installing-sharepoint-2010-on-windows-8.html

I also found the blog by Pradip on installing SharePoint on Windows 7 helpful to get past some initial issues and prerequisites:

http://spradip.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/installing-sharepoint-2010-in-windows-7-64-bit/

Between the 2 blogs I was able to get a successful install and that's when the real fun started.  I was unable to successfully complete the configuration wizard after install due to a couple of issues.

Issue 1: Was with InfoPath 2013.  Every time I attempted to run the Config wizard I received this error.

"Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Office.InfoPath, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Office.InfoPath, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c' or one of its dependencies.

and it would cause the wizard to fail.  I was unable to find a solution for this issue other than to modify my Office install and remove InfoPath 2013.  This work around removed this issue.  Now just need to hope I don't need InfoPath 2013 for a bit.

Issue 2:  Was casused by my dev machine not being connected to the dev domain that I was using.  Dumb mistake I know but hopefully by me posting this it can save someone else a few minutes.  This is the error I received for the no contact with domain error.

Exception: System.ArgumentException: Specified value is not supported for the {0} parameter.

Issue 3: Was caused by the .Net 4.0 Framework that comes with Windows 8.  The script by John Livingston does attempt to address this but the issue I encountered was with the new app pools that SharePoint attempts to create during configuration.  Once SharePoint creates the app pool you have to go into IIS and change the Advanced Settings of the App Pool to run as the 2.0 .Net framework.  This resolved my issues with the Central Admin web app but did not work when creating a new port 80 default Web App.  To get my default port 80 Web App to work I had to first create a new App Pool and set the .Net framework to 2.0.  Then in Central Admin when creating a new Web App I selected the option to use an existing App Pool and selected the newly created 2.0 App Pool.

And like magic I had a new SharePoint 2010 Publishing Web App up and working on Windows 8.

I hope this can help save someone some time and keep them productive while enjoying all the new toys and trinkets of Windows 8.  

WHO NEEDS A START BUTTON ANYWAYS!!