While installing a new SharePoint 2013 system on a Windows Server 2012R2 I encountered an error while starting the Setup for the first time. The installation of the Prerequisites went fine and after several reboots i was ready to start the SharePoint 2013 installation itself.
After starting the Setup SharePoint is going to check if the system requirements are met. One of those requirements is the installation of the .NET Framework 4.5. If there is not .NET Framework 4.5 installed the setup will fail and you will be unable to continue the installation. This is exactly what happened to me…
First i made sure the .NET Framework 4.5 was installed by checking the Add Roles Features option, this was the case. So there should be some other error. As I didn’t install the Server itself i started looking for updates that might caused this issue. I did found the answer in: .NET 4.6.*
Solution:
While installing the system, the engineer did run the Windows Updates so the system is up-to-date, this was also causing the setup to fail. Make sure you check-out what .NET Framework version is installed on your system and if needed remove the Update that is causing the system to be running 4.6 or 4.6.1
Hint
Check the registry and then the Release key to make sure what version you are running
Also you could try to trick the installer by exporting the key, modifying the Version and Release key to fake the installer, then install SharePoint and switch back to the 4.6 keys you exported.
Just for your information, Sharepoint 2013 is compatible with .NET Framework 4.6 and .NET Framework 4.6.1