Unable to Install Windows Server 2012 on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V

Question

My attempts to install are failing with a message "Windows cannot install required files. The file may be corrupt or missing....Error code: 0x800705070".
I am posting this on the Wondows 2012 Server forum but I have had exactly the same problem as described below with Windows 2008 R2 SP1.
As the title says this is on a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 host with all current updates. I have downloaded the ISO file from a Technet subscription file twice, once by direct download and once by the Akamai downloader. The virtual disk is connected with
the default IDE driver. I mounted both installation images as ISOs, located on a file system on the host server.  I have tried installs by deleting the VM and recreating both the VM and a new virtual disk, re-using a previously created virtual disk, and
deleting the partitions in a previously created virtual disk, and executing the format command, and then attempting the install.
I have exactly the same problem trying to create a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 VM on the same host OS.  With those attempts, I downloaded the Technet subscription iso 4 or 5 times, and burned one to a DVD which I attached to the created VM.  Same
error message.
The virtual machines and virtual disks I created and used were all located on an RAID5 array, on a builtin Intel RAID controller using Intel Rapid Storage Technology software version 11.2.0.1066.  The host Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 uses this file system
but the OS is installed on a dedicated drive (C).
I had previously created a guest VM with Windows Server 2008 R2 (several months worth of updates ago) without drama.
I have spent hours reading forums and blog articles on this.  A common response is to download the iso another time, and/or burn it to a DVD instead of mounting an iso image. Although I didn't do the later yet with 2012 Server, but I have done these
other steps attempting to install Windows 2008 Server SP1. The install process takes a while (not to mention doing multiple downloads). Given this seems to be a common recommended remedy, and indeed based on posts does seem to eliminate the problem is some
cases, why doesn't somebody change the Microsoft installer program so it does a thorough integrity check at the beginning of the install process?

Answer 1

Jeff,
After the exercise of Windows 2012 Server successfully installing (as I described above) I also successfully installed Windows 2008 R2 on Hyper-V.  From my standpoint, I have eliminated the problem (which isn't the same as correcting the problem).
The answer to your specific question regarding Hyper-V support is that the motherboard I am using, an Asus P5Q, is not supported by Windows 2008 R2 because it doesn't use ECC memory, and the vendor doesn't say it supports Windows 2008. But I am sure you
know the motherboard vendors often don't test older motherboards with newer software versions.  It appears that in specifying ECC memory Microsoft is trying to protect users of Windows Server from hurting themselves, not saying the software won't run.
Having said that, my suspicion in the beginning was, and still is, that it was some variable(s) left in an unknown state in the Hyper-V environment, which was why after trying to install Windows 2008 R2 several times I tried Windows 2012 which resulted in
the same error, and then encountered the same error trying to install Windows 7 on the same Hyper-V installation. The specific Hyper-V Windows 2008 R2 server had run without any operating problems for months before I started having trouble, and although it
had been quite a while since I had created VMs, that process used to work.  The hardware didn't change. What changed was applying updates through Microsoft Update, and a few access control rights I changed, and at least I think, I set back to their original
value.
So in short, no, my hardware isn't supported by Windows 2008 Server.  Two, your assertion that you are running the same software configuration that I am is very unlikely to be true. There are an extremely large number of things which are different between
your test system and mine, such as which Windows 2008 components are installed, what updates were installed and in what order they were installed, and what other third party software each of us is running, and between AD, and all the features, a large number
of potential differences in ACLs, options, etc. and I don't for a minute think this particular problem was caused by the underlying hardware.
I do appreciate your taking the time to try to help me, and I hope there is one thing you and I could agree on. Microsoft could pretty easily make it much easier to isolate problems. In this day and age reporting hex error codes (as opposed to doing the
table lookup in the error handling proc), and not providing more diagnostic information seems to me to be almost quaint.  And in this case Microsoft can dismiss my problems on the grounds it was all on unsupported hardware. Unfortunately, I think they
are missing an opportunity to make their software better, because in my opinion what I encountered there are a set of conditions which will cause installations to fail that aren't going to get corrected.