A bit lat, but this might help anyone else having this issue.
I have been fighting this off and on all week myself. I am stuck because the servers are hosted, they installed R2, and provided the SharePoint 2013 media which I suspect is prior to SP1.
Today I found this how-to on installing 2013 non-sp1 on 2012 R2:
How to install Sharepoint 2013 without SP1 on WIndows Server 2012 R2
Steps #3 and #4 did the trick and the Sharepoint install could continue.
Spiceworks really is the go-to knowledge base for everything these days...
I've been faffing around with Server 2012 R2 and SharePoint 2013 Foundation without SP1 for the last hour, only to find this thread!
Much appreciated guys, a year and a half on!