Problem installing OCS 2007 R2 on Windows Server 2008 R2 with error: “…requires that VC++ 2008 Redistributable is already installed.”

I ran into an interesting problem last week while deploying an OCS 2007 R2 Edge Server on a Windows Server 2008 R2 for an existing client and found little documentation that was able to help me with the problem so I thought this would be worth while blogging in case anyone else happens to come across it.

Problem

While installing the binaries for an OCS 2007 R2 Edge Server via the: Install Files for Edge Server:

… on a freshly deployed Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit server, you receive the following message:

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 Core Redist 64-bit installation or uninstallation requires that VC++ 2008 Redistribute is already install.

The following KB is found:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981253

…and the KB clearly states the following:

You have a computer that has the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package version 9.0.30729 installed. If you try to install Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API Redistributable (UCMARedist.msi), the installation process fails. Additionally, you receive the following error message:

Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 Core Redist installation or uninstallation requires that VC++ 2008 Redistributable is already installed.

This error message is not clear because it does not indicate that a specific version of Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable package is required.

To resolve the problem of failing to install the Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API Redistributable, download and install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package version 9.0.21022 from the following Microsoft Web site:

Download Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package version 9.0.21022

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=9B2DA534-3E03-4391-8A4D-074B9F2BC1BF&displaylang=en

However, the error indicated early continues to be thrown even after installing the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86).

There’s actually a KB article (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982021) that describes all the additional steps that you need to do when installing OCS 2007 R2 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit server because this OS was not originally supported but even after installing all the additional prerequisites and hotfixes, the error remained.

Solution

The solution was actually simple because after exhausting all the blogs, KBs and forum posts I was able to find with this error without any luck, I ended up sitting back and really re-reading the error message again to think about why the install was complaining. What I ended up noticing was that the KB with information that closely maps to this issue had the link to the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86) package and OCS 2007 R2 was actually a 64-bit application. When I finally figured this out and went ahead to download and install the 64-bit version:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=bd2a6171-e2d6-4230-b809-9a8d7548c1b6&displaylang=en

… then proceeded with the install:

… the installation continued as expected and I was on my way to completely the install.

Quite the interesting problem that took up an additional 45 minutes of my time and I found it interesting that I was unable to find any documentation and information on the internet that provides a direct match to my situation. I hope anyone that may end up going down the same path comes across this blog post so they can save a bit of time during their deployment.