This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
A few months back, I wrote a post with a few commands to get started with server core on Windows Server 2008. Since then, I’ve had some fun tweaking server core installations (including some cheekiness installing third party web servers and browsers).
Sander Berkouwer wrote a series of blog posts last summer that look at changing the look and feel of a server core installation:
- Changing regional and language options (international settings) as well as time and date options.
- Changing display settings such as screen resolution and color depth, screen saver, window and background colors, cleartype and windows dragging settings.
- Changing keyboard and mouse settings/cursors.
- Changing the splash screen, logon screen and tweaking the command prompt window.
Server core may be intended for core infrastructure servers in lights-out data centres but even so, some customisation can be useful. Sander’s notes should help most people get things started.
Hi Mark,
You might wanna check out this utility by Guy Teverovsky (MVP and admin on petri.co.il)
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/guyt/archive/2008/03/22/windows-server-core-coreconfigurator-to-the-rescue.aspx
I haven’t played with Server Core at the moment but this tool looks promising.
Michael
Thanks for this Michael – I was going to spend some time writing a script to perform all the common server core admin tasks… guess I don’t need to do that now ;-)
I have yet to install a 2008 core server. Sounds very interesting to run a windows server with no GUI.