>In the research I did before posting this question, I hadn't found a single person who had successfully installed SQL 2005 on the Windows 7 64-bit OS. Perhaps those on other forums are less resourceful than we are! Could you explain any special procedures you may have followed. The people said the install proceeded flawlessly but when complete, SQL Server was nowhere to be found. Microsoft does say that SQL 2005 is not certified for use with Windows 7 and beyond.

PMFJI, I had absolutely no problems doing just that. Inserted the disk and pretty much went with the defaults. Just to be clear, I'm referring to SQL Server 2005 Developers Edition. SQL Server (not developers ed) I'm pretty sure can only be installed on a server OS.