During the upgrade of vCenter I have faced the exact error that is documented in KB#2013675. The error was as follow:

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Error 28035. Setup failed to copy LDIFDE.EXE from System folder to ‘%windir%\ADAM’ folder

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Below is an actual screenshot of the error:

Further, in the vminst.log file, we found the following error:

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• Unable to copy c:/Windows/ADAM/LDIFDE.EXE to C:/Windows/ADAM/LDIFDE.EXE

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If you have read KB#2013675, then you will notice the above errors are an exact match of the errors documented in that KB. If so why, I am creating this post if a KB is out there that include the solution, because that solution alone which is shown below did not resolve my issue:

——- KB#2013675  Solution Start —-

1. Open the Server Manager for the server and click Add Role.
2. Select the Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services option.

——- KB#2013675  Solution End —-

If the above solution does not work for you, just like was the case in our situation, then try the below solution after you apply the solution documented in the KB. Go to C:/Windows/ADAM and rename the file LDIFDE.EXE to anything maybe LDIFDE.EXE.old or so on. You could actually deleted it, but its safer to just rename it in case you needed it later on. After you rename the LDIFDE.EXE just try to carry out your upgrade/install process again and it should go through this time at least it did in our case. It seems some problem with permissions to over write that file that’s the installer is not able to over come it. Hope this help, as I could not find this solution documented any where else.