A biggest challenge of being a SharePoint Developer is creating correct/appropriate environment to write code against WSS object model. A normal setup for a SharePoint Developer looks something like this.

  1. Run VPC, Install Windows Server 2003 and above, WSS 3.0, Visual Studio, SQL Server and other related tools to enable development.
  2. Install development tools on one of the sandbox and continue development there. There are 2 free remote desktop license granted by default which would allow 2 developers to work simultaneously. But this methodology has lots of loose ends and by no means this post is to endorse this methodology.
  3. Mix and match of several other techniques.

I came across a potential solution from Bamboo Nation. Ok, I admit that this is not really a full blown solution but really a 'hack'. If you folks dont know about Bamboo, they are premier tools and utilities vendors in SharePoint arena. Here is a post from Bamboo's team blog that details the steps required to run Windows SharePoint Service on Vista.

http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/bambooteamblog/archive/2008/05/21/how-to-install-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-sp1-on-vista-x64-x86.aspx

The only additional thing that I had to do is turn off UAC on Vista Machine. UAC was causing problems while trying to create Sites and Collections.