Second installation can be used only for development and testing and should not be used with clients or in production (that's a license violation).
System itself should not cause problems with test installations, so it's probably something with the way your network / server or activeCollab is configured. Check ROOT_URL in config/config.php and make sure that it's set to value accessible to everyone who need to use that activeCollab installation for development and testing.
I was only talking about testing the SVN module with a supplier (We build E-Learning and this is a company we sometimes outsource to)
You may actually be able to answer a question though.
We use Tortoise SVN for version control.
Our supplier uses Team Foundation Server for theirs.
Would we be able to use the AC SVN module to somehow maintain version control between both platforms?
SVN module adds repository and history browser to the projects. It does not have any SVN management or features. Instead, it lets you browse code, see changes and optionally use some commands in commit messages to complete tickets, link to them etc.
As long as SVN command line utility is installed on the server, and activeCollab has access to it, SVN module will work just fine regardless of clients you and your partner are using.
Many hosting providers already have SVN command line utility installed (they come really handy for deployment for example) so you should check with them.
We'll consider that for future releases, but it depends on the interest from other user. Git seams to be a popular VC system, but we did not have much request for Mercurial.
Second installation can be used only for development and testing and should not be used with clients or in production (that's a license violation).
System itself should not cause problems with test installations, so it's probably something with the way your network / server or activeCollab is configured. Check ROOT_URL in config/config.php and make sure that it's set to value accessible to everyone who need to use that activeCollab installation for development and testing.