Install Sharepoint Server 2013 without SP1 on Windows 2012 R2

A little bit late on getting these exact version together but you know better later than never. I just hit the prerequisites on the SP installer and expected to have all worked out auto magically. Seems this is not the case, as I found out researching 1 day on the net for a solution to the Prerequisites screen failing on "Configuring Application Server Role, Web Server (IIS) Role" stage. Remember this is about installing SharePointServer_x64_en-us.img on Windows 2012 R2.




The fix in my case, after trying several other tricks found on net:

 1. start out with a fresh Windows 2012 SP2 environment. I know this is crap, since you already have the environment prepared and all you wanted is to install SP. Your (virtual) machine might still be alright to use, I'm just saying fresh because I realized in my case that I forgot to enable Windows update to happen automatically and update it with the latest HFs, and by the time I realized this, I had already crippled it. So, error free Windows 2012.

 2. install IIS role with everything there is to it;  for instance I also added the ASP role from Web Server (IIS) -> Web server -> Application Development, beside the already selected .Net and ASP.Net 3.5, .Net and ASP.Net 4.5, ISAPI, etc ... Also, on the Application Server check the .Net Framework 4.5 is selected.

 3. installed (in my case) SQL Server 2014 Developer edition; this is of course for later, after installing the SP and getting to the configuration part.

 4. perform a new Windows update to make sure you have the latest updates.

 5. go here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2765260 and get all the files in the Download prerequisites for offline installation; copy the SP 2013 installation files from the dvd to a folder on your drive; place all the files downloaded in the folder prerequisiteinstallerfiles;

 6. now, this is basically the change that actually made a difference in getting passed that error. The issue is that the tools tries to start a command with the wrong name (as you can see by analyzing the log file). So, what I did was renaming the file ServerManager.exe from C:\Windows\System32 to ServerManagerCMD.exe; DO NOT FORGET TO RENAME IT BACK after step 7; you also have to take ownership of the file in order to complete this step.

 6b. Going again on another machine over these steps, it did not work with only the steps above. After waiting for about 3 minutes in which the Prerequisites screen was displaying the Configuring IIS role and the progress bar just kept on rolling, I decided to stop the process since it was going nowhere. So, the first application I closed was actually the Server Manager that the prerequisites application opened up when it launched. The moment I closed it, the process continue and configured the rest of the roles. So, try this, maybe it will work for you too.

 7. now you can run the Prerequisites tool; in my case it was successful. Hope it works for you as well.

 A small comment: I did this on my development environment, and also on some other test server. NOT to be performed on any other types of systems (production, etc) since I am not sure if this breaks something.