SharePoint 2010 upgrade: BETA to RC1

Hello Friends

Today we are going to upgrade a BETA installation of SharePoint 2010 to the Release Candidate 1 (RC1). Here are the steps and issues that were encountered:

1. The uninstallation via Add/Remove programs worked without a hitch. (wow!)
   
2. Installing RC1 required the download and installation of a million prerequisites (+/- 1 million): PowerShell 2.0, Microsoft Server Speech Recognition Language, etc
3. Install SharePoint 2010
4. Enter Product Key (key gets validated via internet)
   
5. Installed Server Farm version (not StandAlone) since we will use a different server with SQL Server 2008 already installed
6. Pick your database server, database name, and the port number for the Central Administration web site.
7. After the installation is successful, the configuration wizard is launched.
8. After a successful configuration, you are directed to the admin config intro page (adminconfigintro.aspx) for final configuration questions such as participating in the Customer Experience Improvement Program, user accounts, and services.
   
9. Pick the account with which you wish to run the SharePoint services.
   
10. Pick the services which you wish to have enabled on the farm. I chose the default set of services (everything except Lotus Notes).
11. Choose the template type for the main root level site and click Next.
    
12. At the tale end of the process, we now find ourselves at the Central Administration main menu.
13. Add your adminstrator level users to the Farm Administrators group and add them to the Web Application Policy for future SharePoint provisioning.
14. Add any additional users to the site.

Looks good so far!

::zackcat::