Applies To

• SharePoint 2016 On-Premise
• SharePoint 2013 On-Premise

Issue

You are trying to execute Setup2016.exe or Setup2013.exe for Installation and you are facing following error:

Error: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.SharePoint, Version= 15.0.0.0, Culture = neutral, PublicKeyToken= 71e9bce111e9429c' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

or

Error: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.SharePoint, Version= 16.0.0.0, Culture = neutral, PublicKeyToken= 71e9bce111e9429c' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Reason

This error could occur if one of the following is true:

1. You are not running the Setup exe on SharePoint Farm Server.
2. You are trying to install wrong version of exe (i.e. Setup2016.exe on SharePoint 2013 or vise versa).

Solution

Please make sure of following:

1. You are running the Setup exe on your SharePoint Farm server.
2. You are running correct version of setup (i.e. Setup2016.exe for SharePoint Server 2016 and Setup2013.exe for SharePoint Server 2013).

That's it! Thank you for your attention.