Windows 2008, Server Core - First Installation

Windows 2008 Server Core

Today I performed my first installation of Windows 2008 Server Core....into a VMWare environment. As this is completely new to me I will probably blog about a lot simple RTFM tasks to start with as I get used to going back to the command line.

Speed

First thing I noticed was how incredibly quick it was. The Operating System installation took a matter of minutes, not the normal hour or so I have come to expect with Windows Server 2003. I guess this is down to the fact the Core platform installs only the necessary components only and not all the normal bloatware that comes with Operating Systems to date. In fact I was so impressed with the time I deleted my VMWare image and started again so I could time how long it took. (Sad I know). It took only 6 minutes to complete the installation.
So after being impressed with t he speed of installation, when I log on it takes 3 minutes “Preparing your desktop”. WHAT DESKTOP!? Surely the whole point of Server Core is there isn’t one, just the lonesome CMD.exe?

VMWare Tools

Okay, first thing you want to do once you have installed an OS into VMWare is install VMWare Tools. Challenge number 1 – Server Core does not have a GUI, so therefore the nice GUI installation of , , does not exist. So, I click VM > Install VMWare Tools, which of course appears to do nothing – except it has loaded the VMWare Tools ISO...Back to the command line and change my directory to D:\ and type MSIExec /i “VMWare Tools.msi” /passive. Hey presto, I have the VMWare Tools installation wizard.
Of course the install is not going to be that easy, I immediately receive two errors; Error loading tpvmmon.dll & Error loading printui.dll, The specified module could not be found. I click to both as this is my only options. After a reboot it seems that VMWare Tools are more or less installed, despite both the errors. However, I also installed VMWare Tools on my ESX environment, this produced no errors and installed seamlessly.

Display settings and Power Management

By default the screen resolution is not great (does it need to be for a CMD line only interface), but more annoying is the fact it has the automatic screensaver/power management turned on so it forces you to log on again after a period of inactivity. After a bit of RTFM, I found you have to change this in all in Regedit.

ScreenSaver settings:
HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\

Resolution:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\GUID\0000\DefaultSettings.XResolution
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\GUID\0000\DefaultSettings.YResolution

To determine which GUID it is, look in each of them at the Device Description. For me it was the GUID associated with VMWare SVGA II. Make sure you remember to change the Base to decimal too!

Simple Tasks

Next issue was how do achieve the things you take for granted with a GUI?

Reboot the server: Shutdown –r (Use shutdown /? to get all the other related tasks)
Set the IP Address:
· Get the interface IDX Number:
netsh int ipv4 show int
· Set IP Address: netsh int ipv4 set address name=%IDX% source=static address=%IP% mask=%SM% gateway=%DG%
· Set DNS Server: netsh int ipv4 add dnsserver name=%IDX% address=%DNS%