First steps – Windows Server 2008 Core – Installation

In this articel I would like to do the initial configuration for a Windows Server 2008 Core installation.

After a pretty easy installation the “Welcome” screen appears.

After pushing “Ctrl-Alt-Del” you have to enter the username Administrator

The account has no password set after installation! You have to change it with the first login. Because of active passwort policy, you have to enter a complex password.

Say hello to the full beauty of Windows Server Core…
Rename, network config and activation are the next steps.

• Rename

  With the help of cmd and netdom.ex we could rename the server.
  Type
  “netdom renamecomputer %computername% /NewName:Sw2k8Core”
  change Sw2k8Core to your needs.
  Answer the following question with Y.
  

• After restarting the system the new name is active
  Type “shutdown -r -d 0:0″ to reboot the system immediately . 0:0 gives the system a reason for the reboot. If you want to give an exaclty reason refer shutdown -? to get the details for the command.
• Networkconfig
  The network configuration could be done with netsh.exe.
  Show all availiable connections with “netsh.exe interface ipv4 show interface”.

  netsh.exe interface ipv4 set address name=2 source=static address=192.168.100.10 mask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.168.100.1
  

  To configure the DNS Server type
  netsh.exe interface ip set dns name=2 source=static addr=192.168.100.1 register=primary
  
  To add a second DNS Server the command must be changed as follows
  netsh.exe interface ip add dns name=”LAN-Verbindung” addr=192.166.192.3 index=2
  
  To check your configuration use ipconfig /all
  
  

• Activation
  After the network configuration the last step is the activation of Windows Server Core
  To start the activation manually use slmgr.vbs -ato
  
  The activation service looks now for an internal KMS Server or uses the key to activate online.

  To show all options of SLMGR use slmgr.vbs.