There is no doubt that Windows 8 relies on .NET Framework 4. But what about .NET Framework 3.5? Just on my machine, three of my daily tools require it (Advance Group Policy Management, Print Manager Plus. and VMware vSphere Client). If you try to install it from the source files, you will find that they are contained on orginial media and not preloaded on your install! Worse, installing it from Programs and Features will give you a cryptic error code. On two machines, I got two different codes – 0x800F0906 and 0x800F081F.
To get past this issue, we can use DISM or MDT. We can even automatically enable this feature in our Task Sequence to save future us some time!