pjbursnall wrote:Yep, I've tried everything you've suggested. I would of liked to have looked at the software as well, but given the technical difficulties in getting it setup, even with MS Web, I think I'll be giving it a miss for now. I can't believe your the one person in this forum who has any idea on how to resolve these issues. Thanks for your help though.
I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has run into and resolved these issues before, but if people see that someone (like me) is already responding to a question with possible solutions then they may not offer their solutions because they might figure that the solutions already posted may work. I know that I don't respond to a question unless I have a solution that hasn't been tried/offered that I believe will work...
All that I can tell you is that I've used Microsoft's Web Platform Installer before (several times) and it has worked for me. Its not completely straightforward, but with some persistence it can be done.
All you really need to run nopCommerce is a web server that can run asp.net (.net 4.0) and SQL server (full-blown or Express). Microsoft's WPI should be able to take care of all that for you, but it is not impossible to set it up without using that. It just sounds to me like you don't have the SQL server database engine installed, because if you did you would be able to connect to it with SQL Server Management Studio in some sort of way.
One more thing to try:
Start | Run | type Services.msc (Windows 7 just hit start and type services.msc in that search box and hit enter) and look for all entries with "Sql Server (Instance Name)"
You should see "SQL Server(MSSQLSERVER)" for full-blown SQL Server or "SQL Server(SQLEXPRESS)" for SQL Express.
The status for your SQL server (full-blown or Express) should read "Started", if it doesn't then you will NOT be able to connect because the service is not running. It is possible to install SQL Server and have it set to manual start up or even if it is set to automatic start up it may not start for some reason - mine does that from time to time.
Whatever the reason, you won't be able to connect to it to do anything without the service installed and running. So if it is not there, then you don't have it installed correctly, if it is there and the status is not "started" then you can right click on it and choose "start". If it is there and started and you still can't connect... you have other issues. :)