Ironing out an SP2013 install

This might save you some time...or at least it'll save me time again when I forget all the things I did to get my 2013 install done!

I started with the AutoSPInstall script for 2013 - if you're unfamiliar with this do yourself the favor and get over to CodePlex and download a copy.  It's a great timesaver.  Apart from naming all of SP's databases with prefixes, it automates the install cycle...very helpful and repeatable!

But - once the install finished, I had some issues.  My logs showed a batch of errors.

1) Certificate Validation Operation took 150003.361 milliseconds... error 8321.  See the separate post for this.  The fix was to set my company's proxy script in the registry for each of the SP Service accounts.  If you get to that HKEY_USER key, you'll know which keys to update - or you can find some handy PowerShell out there to convert a SID to an account if you'd like.  I just set this for everyone there, where it wasn't already set.  I also set an entry in my server's Hosts file 127.0.0.1 crl.microsoft.com, followed by an ipconfig /flushdns - seemed the hosts entry did the trick.

Update 1/26/14: This link really works - follow the steps to export the SharePoint root certificate & import to your trusted root certs & you'll be good to go.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2625048

2) Error 2548/2159 errors...for this, two fixes.  1) Whack the Search Service Application, delete the databases too, then redo the service.  Then, add the Search Service account to the local administrators group...gets search working.

3) My favorite - killed myself on this and it was a real SharePoint d'oh moment...I was getting loads of 3355 connection timeout expired errors.  Do yourself a favor and skip trying to fix the timeouts - the real issue was right there on my Hyper-V Manager console.  The additions were out of date...yeah, put in the Hyper-V Integration Services DVD image, ran the AMD64 setup, rebooted, and no more 3355s.

I was getting these on another install - had the integration services already updated - the two changes I made were disabling named pipes on the SQL Server client configuration, and added the SP Farm account to the local admin group.  I vote for the former as the fix.

4) Related to all of this was a real goofy "An exception occurred" message on my publishing sites.  Once I got the Search Service working again, this error also went away.

Hope this helps you...