Windows Server 2012 Core and Shell Tools

One of the main reasons for installing Windows Server 2012 Core is to reduce patching and the attack surface; however the downside of this means that you have no GUI so configuring the Server is only possible via PowerShell … well sorta!


Once you have installed Server Core 2012 you are greeted with a dos box.


Microsoft has changed Server Core and now allows you to install a MiniShell or the full Windows Shell.  If you enter a PowerShell session and type:

Get-WindowsFeature *gui*
(You will see that the two shell options are not installed)

To install the GUI tools you need to access the install.wim file; this is required because Server Core needs to access the missing files – Core is 3GB smaller. If you use the following command;
install-windowsfeature server-gui-mgmt-infra
(you may get “The request to add or remove features on the specified server failed”)


What we need to do is locate the index number for your Windows Server Core installation; index 2 is Standard and index 4 is Data Centre (index 1 and 3 refers to the Core installation media and will not have the missing files); in my scenario I had installed Server Core Standard – so index 2.

Install-WindowsFeature server-gui-mgmt-infra -source:wim:d:\sources\install.wim:2
(Where D: is my cd drive)
You can install both features by using;
Install-WindowsFeature server-gui-mgmt-infra,server-gui-shell -source:wim:d:\sources\install.wim:2

You must reboot the Server to complete the installation.

After the reboot Server Manger will start automatically; if you close Server Manager you can use the following commands.

We can use PowerShell to verify that the GUI Tools were installed.

You can also install the Full Shell as the binaries are now available locally by running the following command.

We can use PowerShell to verify that the Full GUI is installed.

The removal of the GUI Tools can be done one by one or remove both the Tools and Full Shell in one command as shown below.