I have been trying to install SMP 7.1 for a little over two weeks and keep getting errors about failed MMF registration. I tried moving the server to a different OU to eliminate possible security setting issues, with patches, without patches, with antivirus, without antivirus, rebuilt from scratch, rolled back to a snapshot, older SIM, newest SIM, with sysadmin rights on the SQL server, without sysadmin rights, clean database, reconnecting to old database from previous setup attempts, and all with the same result. I finally found some articles with a couple things to try and it seems to have fixed my issue. Here is what I found:
1) Use the fix in the prereq checker to disable the CRL download/check. This check can cause timeout issues especially in environments without internet connections. - http://en.community.dell.com/dell-groups/dell-management-console/w/dell_management_console-wiki/dmc-faq.aspx
2) Give the "network service" account modify right on the system temp folder. The default folder is c:\windows\temp. You can look at the system environment variables to determine the correct folder. - http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH42637
3) Remove any proxy settings from IE or make sure bypass for local addresses is checked. This was the major issue with my install. We use a proxy configuration file and had to change the settings to point directly at a particular proxy server since it would not read the file. Subsequently all requests to the local computer where shipped to the proxy server first. The proxy server would then challenge the authentication which would then fail so the installer never managed to connect to IIS even though IIS was local. Changing the registry values to ignore the proxy made no difference.
Hopefully this will save someone some time.