Getting Started Wizard: "Error creating the primary administrator account"

This article applies to recent versions of SmarterMail. View articles for SmarterMail 16.x and earlier.

Problem:

Some administrators have reported an issue while performing a fresh installation of SmarterMail, where the first page of the setup wizard shows the error: "Error creating the primary administrator account".  
 
We have found this issue to occur when ColdFusion is installed on the same server. It appears that ColdFusion's TomCat handler mappings are interfering with the SmarterMail site within IIS. When the settings are attempting to be saved, the ISAPI_Redirect.dll mapping is triggered, which is causing the save to fail.
 

Solution:

To resolve this issue, modify the ColdFusion configuration so that the handler mappings and CGI scripts are not included on the SmarterMail site and are only applied to the sites that require ColdFusion. For assistance, please refer to the Adobe ColdFusion support documentation.