Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 encountered an error during setup

Today I wanted to install a SharePoint 2013 Virtual Machine to try developing some stuff with Visual Studio 2012. Since I didn’t want to develop directly on my big farm, I decided to make a new Virtual Machine with SQL 2012 + SharePoint Server 2013 RTM.

Easy task right? New Virtual Machine, 7GB of Ram, Install Server 2012, Install SQL 2012 + SP1, Install SharePoint prerequisites than start the Server installation.  Five minutes later, I get this error that gave me a lot of information on what’s wrong  (sarcastic). A classic for SharePoint.

Error Message: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 encountered an error during setup

SharePoint 2013 setup dialog reading Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Preview encountered an error during setup, opens full size
I forgot to take a Screenshot when the error Happened, so I took one from the internet. Even if in the Screenshot it says “Preview” , I had the problem with the RTM version!

The following pop-up also appears:

Windows pop-up saying Microsoft Setup Bootstrapper has stopped working, with Check online and Close the program options

Did a quick look up on Google, but the only people who had the problem were with SharePoint 2013 Preview, and most of them said the .iso was corrupted. However, I knew my iso was fine, since I installed 4 times already with the same iso.  I re-checked the prerequisites, I restarted the server and nothing.

After a few Google searches I found the answer on something that wasn’t SharePoint related, but I decided to give it a try.

When I created my virtual machine, I left only 1 Virtual processor by default.  I gave the Virtual Machine two Virtual processors, and then it worked like a charm.

Hyper-V settings for the SharePoint 2013 Dev VM with the Processor page highlighted showing 2 virtual processors

Since I didn’t have this problem with my other Servers, I guess this only happens in Stand Alone mode, or when you have a full SQL installed on the same Server.

Even if, the minimum requirements for SharePoint Server 2013 are a 4-core server and its understandable that it might fail , I still think Microsoft Should make the error messages with a lot more details!

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