SPFoxhole Blog

Revised and Updated.  Did some further testing on the issue published earlier and found where the problem was with the SliptStream method.   Bottom line / issue is the way i chose to run my slipstream on this occasion.  When you are creating these installers infrequently and adding numerous Updates into the package I have found a common practice to create sub folders to put the extracted SP and CU bits then copy the content of each folder into the updates folder.   Normally this works fine but on this occasion there was one vital file that caused my issue below to happen (srvsetup.dll)  when i did this earlier i was copying files from different folders (where i did the extraction) into the Updates.   I was prompted to overwrite or skip replacement of a couple files.. EULA and srvsetup.dll… i got a couple EULA prompts and chose to skip all prompts.  So the obvious issue here is that srvsetup.dll kept its old SP1 version which prompted the Compatibility Assistant prompt again.  I am going to remove the bad sections from here so as not to cause any confusion

Been getting into working more and more with Windows Server 2008 R2 and found an interesting gotcha you will come across when installing a new farm.  It is a known fact that R2 will only accept MOSS SP2 or greater.  If you install a lesser version you will get a compatibility pop up such as this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/962935  States that You cannot upgrade from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008 R2 after you install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008.  Ok but in my case this reference article is somewhat backwards.  I have a fresh Windows Server 2008 R2 box built so there is no upgrade being done.  I also am building a fresh farm so again this title doesn't seem to wash with me.

The issue is that you need at least Microsoft Office Server 2007 Service Pack 2 or greater to successfully install onto an 08R2 Server.  Currently to the best of my knowledge there isnt a slipstreamed package available via Microsoft but that isn't an issue…. Creating a package is rather simple.   A while back i did a small screen cast on this which you can view here  pretty simple as you can see.  So I again set out to create a new installer with the Service Pack 2.  So as you can see in the next screenshot I installed this after downloading the already packaged MOSS w/SP1 and attempted to simply slip the SP2 directly into the Updates folder…. Easy enough and supported right?

In this method there is no chance for messing up and in addition it will automatically overwrite the files it needs to overwrite.  Here I am extracting the files directly into the Updates folder for both teh Office Server SP2 as well as WSS SP2.  What i have found and originally wrote about was doing my extracts to seperate folders not only is more manual as you have to copy and paste back into the Upgrades folder but there are prompts that you will need to follow.  This is a much cleaner method.  Thanks to Neil Hodgkinson <Microsoft PFE aka @nellymo ..Twitter>  for the hefty neck slap and recommendation.

So to recap.. for now when your doing a fresh build grab the RTM bits and slip your SP2 onto that.  You can even take that a step farther and slip the latest CU’s (Cumulative Updates) to save some additional tasks after the build…I recommend to at least toss on the Service Pack 2 Update or April CU’s which include that update simply because of the issue with the License Rollback issue that cropped up after SP2 was released.

Hope this helps someone out there :)

Cheers.. see you all at SPC