SharePoint Foundation 2013 Prerequisite Tool Failure

Fixing the SharePoint Foundation 2013 Prerequisite Installer Failure

A common snag when installing SharePoint Foundation 2013 is the Prerequisite Installer failing partway through with an error about being unable to configure the Application Server Role or Web Server (IIS) Role. This is a well-known issue caused by a conflict with the built-in Server Manager tool on the machine you’re installing to.

The workaround that reliably fixes it is to temporarily rename Windows’ own Server Manager executable so it’s out of the way while the prerequisite installer runs its own role configuration:

• Browse to C:\Windows\System32 on the target server.
• Locate ServerManager.exe.
• Rename it to something like ServerManager.exe.bak (you can rename it back afterwards).
• Re-run the SharePoint Foundation 2013 Prerequisite Installer — it should now be able to configure the Application Server and Web Server (IIS) roles without conflicting with the OS’s own Server Manager process.

Once the prerequisite installation completes successfully, rename ServerManager.exe back to its original name — there’s no need to leave it renamed permanently.

A Strong Case for Not Deploying This at All in 2026

Worth being direct about this: SharePoint Foundation 2013’s mainstream support ended back in April 2018, and extended support ended on 12 April 2023 — meaning it’s now been unsupported and unpatched for well over three years. If this fix is still relevant to you because you’re standing up a brand-new SharePoint Foundation 2013 environment today, that’s worth reconsidering rather than just working around the installer bug: you’d be deploying a product with no path to further security updates from day one. Microsoft’s subsequent SharePoint Server releases (2016, 2019, Subscription Edition) dropped the free standalone “Foundation” tier entirely, so there’s no direct like-for-like free replacement — if budget is the reason Foundation was attractive, it’s worth weighing SharePoint Online (as part of Microsoft 365) or a modern lightweight alternative against standing up an already-unsupported on-prem product. This fix remains accurate for anyone maintaining an existing legacy environment, but shouldn’t be read as encouragement to build a new one on Foundation 2013 today.

Resources

• IIS
• guide