I recently ran into a few issues installing SharePoint 2013 that can easily be avoided by installing in a given order.

Firstly for the quick install, this seemed problem free:
1) Build a new windows 2008R2 SP1 Standard edition VM
(I gave mine 3GB of ram)
1a) I joined it to a domain (I did not build the VM as a domain controller)
2) be sure you have an internet connection
3) install sharepoint 2013 preview, choose the standdalone version. (the one that will install the free version of SQL2008 R2
This seemed to work fine.

The trouble came when I tried to install it with the latest version of SQL
Here’s what I did:
(Warning: this fails!)
1) Build a new windows 2008 R2 SP1 standard edition VM
2) Install the RTM version of SQL2012 – it needed .net 4 and IIS
(I think this is where things went wrong, SQL2012 configued IIS with .net 4, not 4.5)
3) tried to run sharepoint install – it failed on the pre-reqs – it seems in my case it could not determine if IIS was setup with .net properly. I even tried the old aspnet_regiis -i command to force it but still the pre-req installer would stop at that point.

I must admin, I was in a hurry to see the new SharePoint so I didn’t take additional troubleshooting steps (I could have downloaded the rest of the prereq’s manually and tried the SharePoint install, but I did not)

Instead I figured I’d try a different approach – first I tried the install I listed at the top of this article – that worked like a champ, but I wanted the SQL2012 based install.

Next I did this:
1) new VM with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
2) Run the pre-req installer from the sharepoint 2013 install iso.
(this configured IIS, and ASP.net 4.5)
3) Do NOT run the SharePoint installer
4) Install SQL 2012 – since IIS and ASP.net 4.5 are already installed it should leave them alone.
5) Come back and do the SharePoint install
It’s installing now – I’ll post the results when it’s done.