Installing SAS Enterprise Miner – Success 1.0

So, thanks to the wonderful Heidi Johnson of SAS Tech Support I have finally successfully installed SAS Enterprise Miner 6.1 .

I had major problems installing Enterprise Miner on any virtual machine. So, I did what I always do in these situations. I went back to the most plain vanilla no-frills thing I could possibly get and started with that. It took me a while to get a Windows XP machine with 1GB RAM on which I could install Windows. I compromised with Dennis by having it dual-boot with Ubuntu so he did not feel that our house had been completely desecrated by Microsoft. And the little one was told not to play on “Mom’s computer in the living room” lest she be corrupted. Since she has an iMac in her room and a Powerbook she has no need for it other than the conviction of all children everywhere that other toys are always more fun than yours.

For those hardy souls among you, here is what I found out to date:

Step 1: Get a computer running Windows XP, NOT a virtual machine.

Step 2: Download software upgrade and upgrade to Service Pack 3 (required for SAS 9.2)

Step 3: Use the DVDs to create a SOFTWARE DEPOT on your computer.  You cannot do a planned installation with Enterprise Miner from DVDs.

Step 4: Go to this directory c:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc  and open the hosts file

Step 5:  The file will have some number like 38.25.63.10 and   localhost.  Hit the tab key after local host and type in the name of your computer. It should be something like joe57-4.living.room

Step 6: Open up the folder where you have saved your SAS Software Depot and right-click on setup.exe

Step 7: There will be a number of windows where it is pretty obvious that you click next. WHEN YOU GET TO THE WINDOW THAT ASKED WHAT YOU WANT TO DO PLANNED INSTALLATION (the first option), INSTALL SAS SOFTWARE, etc. click on the PLANNED INSTALLATION.

Step 8: Now, at this point you might think that you would browse to the plan file folder on your DVD and select a plan file. That won’t work. The plan files folder is empty. Click the button next to USE  A STANDARD PLAN FILE

Step 9: You may think, if like me, you are installing Enterprise Miner and Text Miner on one machine, like I am, that you would select the file that says “Enterprise Miner and Text Miner, one machine”. That would be wrong.  Keep scrolling.  What I actually wanted was Enterprise Miner FOR DESKTOP and Text Miner, one machine.

Step 10: Click next a few more times, your system requirements are updated, about 70 different things are installed and SUCCESS ! I now have Enterprise Miner 6.1 installed and working on one computer.

After that, I did the next step which was to try to reproduce these same steps on another computer. Since I did not have another Windows XP machine around I tried to install it on a virtual machine on my Mac. That did not work. The installer just quit after the first couple of screens. That VM is pretty flaky anyway. The only Vista machine I had handy was 64-bit (I don’t have a license for EM on that operating system) and the rest of the Windows machines were Windows 7 which don’t even have a system32 folder. So, for now I have managed to install Enterprise Miner on one machine, Windows XP 32-bit. I have just started using it. So far, everything seems to be working fine.  So fine, in fact, that I am a bit pouty about not being able to spend more time playing with it.

It is really funny that now I have Enterprise Miner installed, structural equation modeling with AMOS, which is what I am going to be working on this afternoon, now seems weak by comparison! It seems as if it is true what my husband says about me, I am never satisfied.  (Don’t read anything into that! )