After 2 days I finally managed to install SharePoint 2010 with a local account.
I ended up working from these 3 articles:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/cc262485%28office.14%29.aspx#section4
http://sharepoint-sandbox.com/index.php?/Tips-and-Tricks/Infrastructure/tip-65-how-to-install-sharepoint-2010-using-local-account.html?directory=14
http://www.codersbarn.com/post/2009/11/21/Install-SharePoint-2010-on-Windows-2008.aspx
The rest I had to guess.
In Summary here is what I did
- Changed registry entry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\WSS\ServerRole == SINGLESERVER
- Used PowerShell command "New-SPConfigurationDatabase"
Step 1 should fix the local account problem
Note: After changing the registry you may have to reboot.
Step2 is to create the configuration database.
Before running Powershell make sure you have installed version 2 and you mahe to uninstall version 1 from features.
The reason I had to use the powershell command was because I was getting the following error during install:
CryptographicException: Keyset does not exist
It basically died during step 2 of the SharePoint 2010 products Configuration Wizard.
As I had never used powershell before there were a couple of gotchas.
1. At first I was running the wrong version of Powershell. You need to run the modules version.
2. At first I was getting an invalid credentials error. The trick was to run powershell with elevated privileges.
After completing these steps you should be able to run the SharePoint 2010 products Configuration Wizard successfully.
Good luck!!