“Ceres” Search Foundation install error in Exchange 2013 SP1

When deploying the RTM build of Exchange 2013 SP1, I found that one of my servers was throwing an error I hadn’t seen before during installation. (The error message itself is below for reference,) I found few other reports, although KB article 2889663 reports a similar problem with CU1 and CU2, caused by a trailing space in the PSModulePath environment variable. That wasn’t the problem in my case. Brian Reid mentioned that he’d had the same problem a few times, and that re-running setup until it finished normally was how he fixed it. So I tried that, and sure enough, the install completed normally. In most cases I wouldn’t bother to post a blog article saying “this problem went away on its own,” but the error seemed sufficiently unusual that I thought it might be helpful to document it for future generations.

Warning:
An unexpected error has occurred and a Watson dump is being generated: The following error was generated when "$error.Clear();
            if ($RoleProductPlatform -eq "amd64")
            {
                $fastInstallConfigPath = Join-Path -Path $RoleBinPath -ChildPath "Search\Ceres\Installer";
                $command = Join-Path -Path $fastInstallConfigPath -ChildPath "InstallConfig.ps1";
                $dataFolderPath = Join-Path -Path $RoleBinPath -ChildPath "Search\Ceres\HostController\Data";

                # Remove previous SearchFoundation configuration
                &$command -action u -silent;
                try
                {
                    if ([System.IO.Directory]::Exists($dataFolderPath))
                    {
                        [System.IO.Directory]::Delete($dataFolderPath, $true);
                    }
                }
                catch
                {
                    $deleteErrorMsg = "Failure cleaning up SearchFoundation Data folder. - " + $dataFolderPath + " - " + $_.Exception.Message;
                    Write-ExchangeSetupLog -Error $deleteErrorMsg;
                }

                # Re-add the SearchFoundation configuration
                try
                {
                    # the BasePort value MUST be kept in sync with dev\Search\src\OperatorSchema\SearchConfig.cs
                    &$command -action i -baseport 3800 -dataFolder $dataFolderPath -silent;
                }
                catch
                {
                    $errorMsg = "Failure configuring SearchFoundation through installconfig.ps1 - " + $_.Exception.Message;
                    Write-ExchangeSetupLog -Error $errorMsg;

                    # Clean up the failed configuration attempt.
                    &$command -action u -silent;
                    try
                    {
                        if ([System.IO.Directory]::Exists($dataFolderPath))
                        {
                            [System.IO.Directory]::Delete($dataFolderPath, $true);
                        }
                    }
                    catch
                    {
                        $deleteErrorMsg = "Failure cleaning up SearchFoundation Data folder. - " + $dataFolderPath + " - " + $_.Exception.Message;
                        Write-ExchangeSetupLog -Error $deleteErrorMsg;
                    }
                }
            }
        " was run: "Error occurred while uninstalling Search Foundation for Exchange.System.Exception: Cannot determine the product name registry subkey, neither the 'RegistryProductName' application setting nor the 'CERES_REGISTRY_PRODUCT_NAME' environment variable was set
   at Microsoft.Ceres.Common.Utils.Registry.RegistryUtils.get_ProductKeyName()
   at Microsoft.Ceres.Exchange.PostSetup.DeploymentManager.DeleteDataDirectory()
   at Microsoft.Ceres.Exchange.PostSetup.DeploymentManager.Uninstall(String installDirectory, String logFile)
   at CallSite.Target(Closure , CallSite , Type , Object , Object )".