I have finally realized the error of my ways and am now working to install a localhost version of my sites. I viewed your most excellent tutorials (Install DNN to Win 7 and Transferring a Live Site to Localhost). My live site currently uses SQL 2005, but I have the ability to change it to SQL 2008. To do that I assume I would back up by current database through the hosting provider and restore to the 2008 server. Is that a correct assumption?

Your Install DNN to Win 7 tutorial gives very specific instructions for setting up SQL Server Express 2008, and the other tutorial assumes SQL Server Express 2005 is already installed and functioning. My attempted installation of SQL Server Express 2005 into my Win 7 environment had multiple errors, so I assume there are compatibility issues there.

My question is this: will I run into synchronization problems later if I use SQL Server Express 2008 on my localhost and keep SQL Server 2005 on my live sites?

SQL Server 2005 will be just fine. If you try to move a database from 2008 to 2005, you may be in for some "challenges."

Hello,

Your other option would be to setup virtual PC within win7.

How to setup and use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

There is a new version of virtual PC for Win 7 which works really well. I would always recommend to use Virtual PCs for working with local DNN installations, it makes life a lot easier and means it doesn't conflict with your current PC setup, the tutorial link above lists a lot of benefits.

With a Win7 virtual PC, it comes with a licensed install of win XP for free, so you could potentially setup win xp on a virtual machine with SQL Server 2005.

I would recommend this if your live site is 2005 and you are wishing to transfer your local database to your live database.

If however you are just restoring your live 2005 database to a local 2008 database for testing this will work fine - howver you will not then be able to transfer the local 2008 database to your live site.

Thanks,