I’ve been doing quite a few new SharePoint farm installations lately and I have ran into this error twice in a row now so I thought I would share it.  When running the perquisites installer for SharePoint 2010, the following error message is received.

The tool was unable to install Hotfix for Microsoft Windows (KB976462).

This hotfix fails to install and as a result all over remaining prerequisites are not installed as well.  Your error message will look something like the screen below.

The resolution to this is actually quite simple.  Just run the Perquisites Installer again and the installation will be successful.

I’m not really sure what causes this but at least it’s easy to resolve.  If you continue to have issues, try downloading the patch for KB976462 and installing it manually.