I have a standalone HP Server with Windows 2012 R2 foundation and I have run in to a catch 22 situation with SharePoint 2013 Foundation and I can't get past the setup!
I searched forums without success and any advice or workaround would be very much appreciated!
The SharePoint prerequisite installation was finally passed after removing the redundant semicolon in the environment variable PSmodulePath which cause system to reboot repeatedly. The pre prerequisite installation claims that .net framework 4.5 is already in place which it seems to be according the server dashboard add/remove roles and functions tool as well, and as it is also required for the AD, etc.
The SharePoint setup however will not continue and says that .net framework 4.5 is missing!?
I already have tried NetFxRepairTool and hotfix KB2925384-v4-x64 with no effect!
The background is that SharePoint actually was up and running 2 weeks ago, but since I had no previous experience with SharePoint, I used my normal Admin account for the setup and did not research enough to understand and configure the recommended accounts prior to the first deployment, quite stupid though!
Then I got errors repeatedly from the SPTimerV4 service that requires an exclusive account. It became worse after a SharePoint security update and I could not run the SharePoint configuration wizard through step 9 out of 10 with “PostSetupConfigurationTaskException” in the log. I also had error from the SPUCWorkerProcessProxy.exe in the dashboard and I believe some of these problems also may be related to the fact that the Admin password is changed every 30 days, and possibly made login to some of the services impossible for the system?
I finally decided to start all over and uninstall as much as possible and now do the reinstallation correctly in accordance with 1150-page Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 this time! I have now set up the required exclusive accounts in AD and was prepared for a second deployment.
All software and services can unfortunately not be removed up front, since some are part of the operating system and also used by other applications, which for instance applies to .net framework 4.5!
I still have the SQL 2014 Express server in place, it seems healthy with all the databases used by SharePoint, but I have not so much hope in recovering any of the SharePoint pages I already made, but I did not really see any reason to remove it!
Some problems are of course related to my lack of experience, but still there are a lot of issues with the SharePoint deployment that Microsoft really need to handle with a service pack or a hot fix! Building installation packages requires thorough craftsmanship and considerations. Obviously a lot went wrong here, causing it professionals many issues with the SharePoint installation. Reinstallation of Windows should not be an option that needs to be considered when an application gets corrupt!