Once is accident

I've just spent the past four and a half hours trying, and failing, to get Microsoft SharePoint installed and running.

I think the .NET 2.0 Beta runtime on my main server is screwing things up. I think this because, for example, other people have gotten SharePoint running without a problem, and my Das Blog difficulties only seem to affect this server. (I got Das Blog running on a laptop—which doesn't have .NET 2.0 on it—just fine.)

Why doesn't stuff just work?