Running SharePoint 2010 on Windows 8 Consumer Preview

If you're a SharePoint geek and you love beta software (just like me) then you'll want to know if it's possible to set up SharePoint 2010 on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.  I'm happy to report that it is, and that it's relatively easy.  :)

What you need to do is install all of the prerequisites manually, turn UAC off and then follow these instructions for getting it set up on Windows 7: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx

You do need to be careful about the Windows Features though, as the package manager script listed on MSDN will not install the necessary .NET 3.5 features:

 

Before you can run up Central Administration, or any other SharePoint sites however, you will need to change the .NET Framework version to v2.0

Open up IIS Manager by hitting start and then typing inetmgr then hit enter.  You then need to expand application pools and right click on the app pool you want to change (all SharePoint App Pools will need to run under version 2.0.50727) and click basic settings:

Once there, change the app pool from v4.0 to v2.0:

 After you've got it all up and running, you can then create SharePoint projects in Visual Studio, and use it for prototyping and playing around.  I still haven't managed to get the SharePoint PowerShell cmdlets to work as yet, since PowerShell runs against the v4 framework.  If anyone has any hints about this, then please let me know!