Server 2012 core (no GUI) Auto Logon

windows-server-2012windows-server-core

I am trying to enable automatic logon in Windows Server 2012 Core (no GUI). I followed the instructions that i have been following for years, detailed in this Microsoft Support KB, but auto login is not working.

It works fine for Server 2012, with GUI, but not on Core.

For curious minds: I enable auto login it saves me time it's my lab, and isolated, so I don't have to worry about security.

Best Answer

You can always play with command line and add the following registry keys:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\winlogon

Create following keys:

AutoAdminLogon = 1
DefaultUsername = currentUserName
DefaultPassword = currentPassword

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Why does the Server Core gets patches for Internet Explorer

In many cases IE is fairly well integrated into the OS for other functions beside simple web browsing. For instance, if you open the Internet Control Panel in a full GUI version of Windows it is essentially the IE control panel. IE is never really "gone". I would imagine that in core the same is still applicable and the updates may actually be fixing common components of IE that also affect your OS.

Windows Server 2012 – Identifying Server Core

In PowerShell:

Get-WMIObject Win32_OptionalFeature | where Name -eq 'Server-Gui-Shell' | Select InstallState

returns 1 on a full server and 2 on a server core install.

Edit:

While my answer above is correct, there are two problems with it:

When using this command on a workstation, it returns nothing, so you have to add an extra check for this.
It is slow, when I tried it, it took between 600 and 3500 milliseconds.

So the more pragmatic approach is to just check for the existence of a certain file:

(Test-Path "$env:windir\explorer.exe")

This returns $false for a Server Core installations and $true for all others and it takes one millisecond to execute.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Why does the Server Core gets patches for Internet Explorer

Windows Server 2012 – Identifying Server Core

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