The SharePoint 2013 version of this Screencast is available here.

SharePoint Foundation 2010 is the free version of SharePoint Server 2010, and a lot of companies find it a suitable choice for their intranet. As a free version, it has a serious limitation – you get only basic search capabilities; no search suggestions, best bets, quick filtering, search in PDF files etc.

And here comes a big surprise – Search Server 2010 Express. Judging by its name, you would never guess that it is the good old SharePoint Foundation 2010, with Enterprise Search Capabilities. Sometimes, you might see it described as SharePoint Foundation on steroids. You can get a detailed product features comparison at the Search Server Express page.

As you are probably aware, the heart of SharePoint is the database server – Microsoft SQL server. Most of the SharePoint installation instructions which you will find on the Internet, comfortably skip the installation and configuration of SQL server. In this step-by-step Screencast, we start with the installation and configuration of SQL Server 2008 R2 Express with SP1. The Express version is also the free version of SQL Server 2008 R2, so you get the bottom line for one of the best Intranet products – SharePoint 2010.

For your convenience, we have published the links and PrerequisiteInstaller.Arguments.txt file, used in the Screencast here

Step 1 In this step, we demonstrate how to create the required SQL Server domain accounts, and how to install SQL Server 2008 R2 Express.

Step 2 Next, we install Search Server 2010 Express. Here you will see the easy install, where prerequisites are downloaded automatically from the Internet.

Step 3 In step three, we demonstrate a more difficult approach. You will see how to prepare Search Server 2010 Express installation disk with the required updates, and how to slipstream SP1 and the latest SharePoint cumulative update into your installation package. That will save you the trouble of running again SharePoint Farm Configuration wizard later, after applying SP1 on a live SharePoint server.

Step 4 At the end, we launch and run the SharePoint Farm configuration wizard, as a final step of the installation and configuration of Search Server 2010 Express.