Powershell – Install Active Directory PowerShell module on Windows Server 2012

This does not appear to be possible. Server 2012 R2 (and Windows 8.1) come with IE 11 pre-installed, so you'll either need to try to make the site work with compatibility mode, or revert to Server 2008 R2 or Server 2012.

On a somewhat related note, don't browse from your servers. That's just icky and unsafe. Browse from your workstation instead.

I did triy a few different things before deciding this wasn't possible, by the way:

1. Using wusa to remove the update corresponding to IE 11
   • wusa.exe /uninstall /kb:2841134 returned a dialogue telling me that the update wasn't installed in this computer. Fair enough, though that is the KB for IE 11.
     
     
2. I used dism to try enabling the Internet Explorer feature, which succeeded, but did not expose the feature in the GUI. (Trick from Windows Server 2008 R2/Windows 7 IE downgrades.)
   • dism.exe /online /Enable-Feature:Internet-Explorer-Optional-amd64
     
     
3. I used the PowerShell uninstall/remove feature cmdlet to try to remove Internet Explorer, but to no avail.
   • Uninstall-WindowsFeature Internet Explorer, Uninstall-WindowsFeature InternetExplorer and Uninstall-WindowsFeature Internet-Explorer-Optional-amd64 all returned an invalid argument error.
   • Parsing the output of Gte-WindowsFeature also fails to turn up any mention of Internet Explorer, which would seem to confirm that's it's not an installed feature, and thus, cannot be removed as one.

If anyone can uninstall IE 11 or downgrade to IE 10 successfully on Server 2012 R2, I'd be interested to know how, but I'm reasonably convinced it can't be done in a way that won't remove the whole UI as well.

Although I don't have a resolution for you, I did spot a couple of people with the same problem and no resolution. See last comment on this thread and comment by 'regexaurus' here.

It wouldn't surprise me if this is "by design" in the sense that there may be some sort of dependency that was difficult to break from a software engineering point of view within the time constraints for release. The huge amount of work required to identify and break the spider's web of inter-dependencies within the Windows code-base to allow more modularisation (particularly separating out the GUI layer) is something that's been ongoing for years.

If the add role/feature wizards says it's a dependency, I can't see what you could do to get round it.