A tale of two error in the path to RC install.
I wanted to install the RC of TFS2012 to do some upgrade proving. To keep up to date the target is Windows Server 2012, running SQL 2012, and TFS2012 on VMWare Workstation 8.0.
To keep it light to start with – no SharePoint.
So I rolled out my Windows 2012 Server Beta and got the error:
Digging through the logs it was failing at the .NetFX check. After a bit of thinking and checking that the latest version of .NET 4.5 was installed, it hit me that the TFS 2012 RC would not run on the Windows Server 2012 Beta.
OK. So I needed to install Windows Server 2012 RC. The Beta was not an issues, so I spun up a new VM pointing to the ISO and got the semi-infamous 0x0000005D error
So I Googled it with Bing, and got some hits. A great post by Pete Long here http://www.petenetlive.com/KB/Article/0000618.htm put me on the right path. Windows Server 2012 RC has a requirement for the Data Execution Prevention (aka No Execute Memory Protection) to be enabled.
To check if it is on your machine, follow the instructions here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912923
This was drawing a blank, so I contacted the manufacturer of the laptop I use, and they pointed me to a BIOS update by Compal.
I needed a light boot from a USB flash drive, and found this page which has a light utility that will create a small footprint bootable USB http://www.biosflash.de/e/bios-boot-usb-stick.htm. Booting from that I simply ran the batch file provided from the Compal update which updated the BIOS of the machine (after a backup of the BIOS and key data for safety), and then installed Windows Server 2012.
TFS flew on, after doing the SQL install following Stuart Preston’s easy one-liner from http://stuartpreston.net/blog/2012/04/06/automated-installation-of-sql-server-2012-for-tfs-11-at-the-command-line/
Note: With VMWare workstation 8 – you must disable the VMware tools, and watch as it will try to install them, even though you have asked it not to! Cancel as soon as you see them pop up, or the VM will hang in an unknown state.
Now to get on and experiment with the working setup!
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