
It's not wrong per se to put everything on C:, but just as a best practise for almost any server tool, regardless of whether it is ConfigMgr or not, it's often best practice to install it elsewhere than c: Once you have confirmed that mpsetup.log looks successful, then could you tell us what method of client installation you are using? There's at least 3 common ways to install the client, (and a few uncommon ways). Although I personally kind of hope you have multiple drives on this server, and you deliberately chose to put the install on a different drive letter. On this server, check \logs\mpsetup.log If you don't know, if you didn't change the defaults, it's probably under c:\program files somewhere. If you chose the default options, that was likely done.

In order for you to have client communicating successfully, you do need to have the Management Point role setup and working. And if you've been uninstalling/reinstalling, I could see all kinds of wierdness happening that could be unexpected. (I know, kind of convoluted, but that's how it works). Although the computer that hosts your server can also be a client, when you are talking about the server piece of ConfigMgr, the control panel applet not existing can happen, because it isn't a client yet. All of the other responses above were assuming that you mean the ConfigMgr client, which would be in Control Panel, and be an applet.
