SharePoint 2013 PreRequisite Installer Failing — Unable to Install IIS

This is a story from a while ago. At a time when I needed to install SharePoint 2013 to test the migration plan to a newer version.

FYI if you are ever in this predicament, convince the higher-ups to just start a clean server and not migrate. Better yet, convince them to move away from SharePoint altogether!

The issue came when I was running the SharePoint prep tool. You can see a screenshot of the issue below. Stating that the IIS role had a configuration error:

After A LOT of research and Googling, I give up and review the log. I hadn’t done this so far as the search results referenced the log being useless. So I didn’t even bother.

After reviewing the log, I find that the prep tool is failing to find a ‘ServerManagerCMD.exe’ tool in the system32 directory. I hit my head against the nearest wall and realise how stupid the issue is.

Microsoft’s installer is trying to find something that they named differently. The prep tool is looking for ‘ServerManagerCMD.exe’ whereas the actual tool is called ‘ServerManager.exe’. After a quick copy, rename and prep tool restart everything is working fine.

I can now install the program. Yay so happy for me!