Exchange 2013: Readiness check hangs at 90 % and aborts

Interesting error during the installation of Exchange 2013 on a Server 2012 R2. The readiness check of the installation hangs at 90 % and then aborts after a long time with the following error message:

The exact wording somewhat shortened:

Error:
The following error was generated when "$error.Clear();
$keyPath = "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\WebManagement\Server";
if (!(Get-Item $keyPath -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue))
{
New-Item $keyPath -Force
}
Set-ItemProperty -path $keyPath -name "EnableRemoteManagement" -value 0x1 -Type DWORD -Force;

if (Get-Service WMSVC* | ?{$_.Name -eq 'WMSVC'})
{
Set-Service WMSVC -StartupType Automatic
Stop-SetupService -ServiceName WMSVC;
Start-SetupService -ServiceName WMSVC
}
" was executed: "Microsoft.Exchange.Configuration.Tasks.ServiceDidNotReachStatusException: The 'Running' status could not be reached by the 'WMSVC' service on this server.

The last part of the error message is probably the most important:

The 'Running' status could not be reached by the 'WMSVC' service on this server.

"WMSVC" is the web management service of the IIS, which is required for remote server management:

The web administration service would not start on my server:

There are also a few errors in the event log, including this one, which put me on the right track:

The work process for application pool "WMSvcAppPool", PID="4056″, could not initialize http.sys communication for processing HTTP requests. It is therefore classified as faulty by W3SVC and terminated. The data field contains the error number.

When checking the settings, I noticed that no certificate was assigned to the management service:

Normally, a self-signed certificate is assigned to the web administration service during installation. Apparently there was a problem in my case, because the certificate is not available, which was confirmed by a look at the certificate MMC:

In my case, I made it easy for myself and simply removed the service once via the server manager and added it again:

After reinstalling the service, the certificate was created:

And the service can also be restarted:

The correct certificate is then also displayed in the IIS Manager:

It is also sufficient to create an appropriate certificate, for example via the internal PKI, and assign it to the web administration service. In my case, reinstalling the service was quicker.

Now the installation works and the Exchange readiness check runs smoothly.