The expected version of the product was not found on the system

I have a SharePoint 2010 environment which I am getting the error message "The expected version of the product was not found on the system" when trying to apply the October 2012 CU.  The server has (for a long time) had SharePoint 2010 SP1 applied, and in fact was on Feb 2012 CU, prior to attempting to run this.  I've tried to reboot the server, run both the foundation update, and the server (both with the same error message results), and even uninstalled Office 2010 (which happened to be on the server for development purposes), hoping that perhaps it was an Office component that was failing - same results afterwards.

As none of this was working, I tried instead to download another CU (June 2012 CU) and apply it to the server.  This one worked successfully, and the server was then on the June 2012 CU.  I then retried to apply the October 2012 CU, with the same (failed) results.

Note: There are NO language packs installed, only the default English Language (1033) has ever been used on this server.

I have tried using the workaround described here, however, that allows the installation to proceed, but it finishes the entire installation in just a few seconds (in other words, no files are actually copied, and no upgrade is every triggered when running psconfig) - normally this operation takes upwards of an hour, so skipping the check doesn't actually solve the problem.

I've also tried re-downloading the packages on the off chance that something went wrong in the download - this made no difference.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Colin Phillips | Twitter: @itgroove_colin | Blog:http://mmman.itgroove.net

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