Installing BizTalk Server 2006 Trial Version on Windows XP

I had recently been fiddling with BizTalk at work and thought it might be nice to have the trial version to play with on my Windows XP Pro PC at home.  This turned out to be quite a bit more difficult than I had expected.  What follows is an outline of how I finally managed to do it.  This is not a complete how-to (you will probably need to refer to Google, MSDN, and the MS document "Installing and Configuring Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 on Windows XP" for details) but it could save you many hours of frustration.

1. Biztalk 2006 requires a non-express version of Visual Studio 2005 to be installed first (Visual Studio 2008 won't do, neither will the Express version of 2005).  I downloaded the 90-day trial Professional version from here  (requires registration).
2. This is a 2.7GB DVD image in ISO-13346 format. This format is apparently currently only used by Windows Vista, which I don't have access to, so I couldn't write it to a DVD.  Instead I downloaded the unsupported Microsoft tool Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel from here  (under More Information) and mounted the image as a virtual CD drive (see the readme file). Then I was able to install Visual Studio 2005 by going into the \vs\setup directory on the virtual drive and running setup.exe.
3. Visual Studio 2005 also installs SQL Server 2005 Express.  Biztalk 2006 requires the SP2 version of the latter (though it doesn't tell you until near the end of its install). I uninstalled all the existing SQL Server 2005 packages (Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs) and  then downloaded and installed Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express SP2 from here.
4. BizTalk requires Internet Information Services (IIS).  I installed them through Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Windows Components (requires Windows XP installation CD).
5. BizTalk also requires the MS Management Console (Windows XP Update KB 907265).  I downloaded and installed it from here.
6. The BizTalk install needs to be run in the Windows XP System account.  If it isn't you get COM+ errors near the end of the install. I downloaded the Microsoft Sysinternals utility psexec.exe from here.
7. I downloaded the 120-day trial version of BizTalk Server R2 from here  (requires registration), unzipped it to C:\build,  copied psexec.exe into C:\build.  I then ran the Biztalk install in the System account as follows: Start -> Run -> C:\build\psexec.exe -s -i c:\build\setup.exe.  
8. I chose the default options at all stages (I think!) and where it asked for a username and password I gave the same administrator account and password each time (clicking Yes at the warning messages).  Eventually I got it so the BizTalk Server Configuration console showed that Enterprise SSO, Group, BizTalk Runtime and Business Rules Engine were enabled and only the HWS, BAM and EDI/AS2 components were disabled.  That was good enough for what I wanted to do, I hadn't expected the latter to work anyway.
9. I was then able to use Visual Studio and the Biztalk Server Admin console to create, deploy and test a simple BizTalk application.

Comments

[Alex Brown]

SQL Server Express install for BT 2006 is NOT recommended.
HAT and BAM won't work out of the box as SQL Agents are not present (you can workaround some of this via running the underlying stored procedures), neither as I recall are SQL Notification Services, Analysis Services or Integration Services.

[PrashanthSpark]

Please let me know how to start with Biz Talk ?

[Tristram Brelstaff]

PrashanthSpark, I'm sorry I can't really help you. I only used BizTalk for a few months and that was over a year ago. If I had to use it again, I would search out and read one or two good books on it. I seem to remember a couple published by Apress.