I've been posting and searching for a solution to why on god's green earth I wasn't able to install contact forms on Umbraco. There were a ton of factors that went into this post, and about 250 hours spent debugging, reading, and even getting a hold of Niels (@umbraco on twitter), and a few others in the Umbraco community who ultimately led me to find the solution (specifically @netaddicts and @readingdancer). I'm posting this in case anyone else has the problems I had.

Here's the environment and ingredients:

1. Shared Web Hosting service (SoftSys, who is awesome & their support team is FAST, seriously)
2. SQL Server 2008
3. Umbraco 4.0.2.1
4. Umbraco Contour

The Errors -

Database could not be installed + 
umbraco.DataLayer.SqlHelperException:
Umbraco Exception (DataLayer): SQL helper exception in ExecuteNonQuery
---> System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Invalid object name
'dbo.cmsMacroPropertyType'. at...

And

Formpicker could not be added + 
umbraco.DataLayer.SqlHelperException:
Umbraco Exception (DataLayer): SQL helper exception in ExecuteNonQuery
---> System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: The INSERT statement
conflicted with the FOREIGN KEY constraint
"FK_umbracoMacroProperty_umbracoMacroPropertyType". 

What I did wrong:

Before you install anything, back when you create your database and database user? That database user you create has got to have the "dbo" schema assigned to it. This was actually mentioned to me by @netaddicts (on twitter) and Niels via email; and darn it if I didn't know what he meant by that earlier today...

1. Open up Microsoft SQL Server Management (Studio Express)
2. Browse to your database
3. Expand "Security"
4. Expand "Users"
5. Select the User you created
6. Change the "Default Schema" to be "dbo"
7. .... Now, you can install Umbraco
8. .... Then you'll be able to install Contour

Hopefully this post finds other rusty or noobish or SQLy-inept folks before it costs you the amount of time it took me to get to this point.

Additionally, I tried Runway Contact Forms, doc2form 2.0, AutoForm Plus, Axendo and Essence Design Generic Email Form 2.3; not to out any of those solutions - as I could not get them to work on my previous web host, Contour is by far the most user friendly form interface for creating, altering, and embedding forms I came across in all my hours of trial.