Problems while installing SharePoint 2013 Preview

So with the recent release of SharePoint 2013, I decided to go ahead and install it.  Since I was just testing the waters, I decided to go ahead and simply install the Standalone installation of SharePoint 2013.

Of course, the first installation problem I encountered was during the installation of the software prerequisites:

After looking at the installation log file, I discovered the source of the error.  It was related to a failure in running the iisext.vbs script.  So I simply had to open up a command prompt window and run the command manually:

The next error I encountered was while running the Configuration Wizard:

Fortunately, someone had already encountered this issue and found a suitable workaround: http://tomblog.insomniacminds.com/2012/07/17/sharepoint-2013-standalone-installation-issue/

So I simply had to run the following command at a command prompt to get the configuration database created:

.\PSCONFIG.EXE -cmd Configdb create SkipRegisterAsDistributedCacheHost

Of course, as stated in the earlier article, there was a good chance that I would also get a failed to create Sample Data error message, and of course, I did!

Apparently, though, the Sample Data is not required for a functional installation of SharePoint 2013 so I went ahead and attempted to access Central Administration.  

When I went to Manage Web Applications, I was able to see that a default Web Application had been created for me.

After browsing to the web application, I noticed that I was able to select my Site Collection template.

After going through the standard group creation process, I was finally able to see my new SharePoint 2013 Team Site!