I just installed Exchange 2013 Standard SP1 on a server running Windows 2008 Server R2 SP1. I didn't encounter any issue when installing Exchange 2013 SP1. It passed prerequisite check and went though all 15 steps smoothly without any issue. However when I tried access Exchange Admin Centre (ECP) at https:\\servername\ecp I got HTTP 500 Internal Server Error saying "This website cannot display the page. Most likely causes: 1. The website is under maintenance. 2. The website has a programming error." I tried access ECP at https://localhost/ecp and I got the same problem. Under either cases I was able to see the logon page of ECP and I was able to enter my credential (e.g. domain\user name, password). However I got HTTP 500 Internal Server Error at the next page. I tried entering wrong password and ECP returned "The user name or password you entered isn't correct. Try entering it again". This indicates ECP does check my logon credential.
I checked the event viewer of the exchange server. There is nothing Except for a couple of entries of Schannel eventID 36888 every hour. I did some reached on this. As per the link below, there is nothing to worry about.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/forefront/en-US/92c63737-c2a3-41f7-8878-3b0cf5ee95ff/new-install-event-log-schannel-event-id-36888
My research showed that HTTP 500 error messages are generally attributed to either certificate misconfiguration or authentication misconfiguration of OWA and ECP, but I don't know why I get this error right after a fresh new installation.
One thing I want to mention is that there was a previous attempt of Exchange 2013 installation by a former IT person. I ran "get-ExchangeServer" command in Exchange Management Shell and it returned two servers both running Mailbox and Client Access role. The first server in the list does not exist anymore as I confirmed the server hardware has been wiped and rejoined to the domain not as an exchange server. The second server is the one I installed recently.
Any idea what caused the problem? Your help is much appreciated.