Install SharePoint 2013 development environment

Today I tried to install a new development environment for SharePoint 2013 on a virtual machine. It turns out there are a few things to think about when doings this. First off I had to install the Windows Server 2012 R2 whitout installing any updates. This is beacuse if you do install all the updates first you will install newer versions of the .net framework for instance which will not be compatible with the installer for SharePoint 2013. You will get an error message saying .NET 4.5 is not installed when trying to run the installer. The prerequisites installer and everything will still run just fine. It might have been a bit much but after trying to uninstall the updates for .NET framework and still not being able to run the installer yielding the same error I decided to just reinstall Windows Server 2012 R2. After the installation I ran the prereq installer straight away before installing any windows updates. The prereq installer reboots the server a couple of times so I let it do it’s thing.

After all this I tried running the installer but got an error message saying something like “there was an error with the installer”. No other explanation to what the error might be or anything other than that it failed. I looked in the event log and found an application error there with the following text: Faulting application name: MsiExec.exe

After searching google for a few minutes I found these links:

http://expertsharepoint.blogspot.se/2014/08/sharepoint-2013-sp1-installation-failed.html

https://praveenix.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/sharepoint-2013-sp1-installation-failing-with-event-id-1000-faulting-application-name-msiexec-exe/

Which described the same problem. The issue was with a couple of registry keys and in my case one of them were present. I looked for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\FileRenameOperations.

The latter was present in my case so I deleted it and the installation went off without a hitch.

 

UPDATE:

Apparently this was not the end of the story. When I tried to run the products and configuration wizard everything seemed to work until it was creating the sample data. Now the solution to this was in my oppinion even more wierd. I found this technet wiki post that described the same problem:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/17933.sharepoint-2013-the-sddl-string-contains-an-invalid-sid-or-a-sid-that-cannot-be-translated.aspx

I am pasting the solution here aswell just in case the link doesn’t work:

• Add the account you want to use for search service in WSS_Admin_WPG group. If you are going to use built in administrator account this should be present by default.
•  Then execute this command from sharepoint powershell console:
• $SearchService = Get-Credential Domain\UserName

In our scenario of standalone installation the Domain should be the machine name.

• Then execute this command: New-SPManagedAccount -Credential $SearchService
• Now Go to “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\15.0\Data\Office Server” and find the folder that starts with Analytics with a postfix guid.
• Note: If you selected a different location to store index files, check this path! 
• Right-click –> Properties–>Sharing–>Advanced Sharing
• Check the “Share this folder’ check box and click on Permissions
• Add the Search Service account created in step 2 and select Full Control. Do the same for WSS_ADMIN_WPG
• Run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard again. It should now complete successfully.