You may find that your Exchange 2010 installation fails part way during the install, with the error message (taken from ExchangeSetupLog):

[Timestamp] [1] [ERROR] Cannot start service winrm on computer ‘.’.
[Timestamp] [1] [ERROR] The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it

Some organisations use customised hardened builds (like ours) and have services disabled until they are required.  In our case, WinRM is one such service.  The solution is pretty obvious in this case: Set the service to “Automatic” and re-run setup.  The service will be set to “Automatic (Delayed Start” by default, which is fine.  The installation will resume from where it was interrupted and will hopefully complete without any issues this time.

Another issue you might hit in rare cases is that while running Exchange 2010 setup, the install fails with the error message:

[Timestamp] [2] Process standard output: ERROR ( message:Cannot find APP object with identifier “Default Web Site/owa”. )

[Timestamp] [2] Process standard error:
[Timestamp] [2] [ERROR] Unexpected Error
[Timestamp] [2] [ERROR] Process execution failed with exit code 1168.

Some organisations harden IIS (Internet Information Services) installation in their Windows builds by changing default paths but also the default website name.  Exchange 2010 setup specifically looks for that name during the install process and fails if it can’t find it.

Solution: Go to IIS Manager.  Expand the tree until you get to the default website.  Right-click and rename the website to “Default Web Site” and restart IIS.  Confirm that the rename worked and IIS is running.  Re-run setup.  This time, it should continue from where it failed and should complete successfully.

Hope this helps!