The nice thing about training in a test environment is you can blow things up and not have to worry about it. Its more fun when the training exercise you are doing blows up in your face and you have to go from just learning mode to troubleshooting mode just to complete the exercise.
I do love learning, and I do love a challenge. I decided to take the 90 Days to MCSA challenge on figuring it would be good motivation for me to upgrade my Microsoft Certifications. I also figured that going with books from Microsoft Press, that recently came out, I would be even better off, since they would have the proper information. With all of this in mind I started off going through chapter 1 and doing the migration exercise at the end of the chapter. Piece of cake, everything went exactly as it said it would in the book. Each step worked beautifully. Coming off this success I went into chapter 2 ready for what it had to throw at me.
After reading through everything I started the first exercise which consists of installing Server 2012 Core and then Converting to the GUI. The Core install had no issue, no problems. I get to the steps to do the conversion, and the problems started. Following step by step I went to the powershell and typed:
Install-WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra –Restart –Source c:\mountdir\windows\winsxs
To convert to a minimal GUI system, and wound up stalling out at 68% and then failing with the following information:
Install-WindowsFeature : The request to add or remove features on the specified server failed.
Installation of one or more roles, role services, or features failed.
The source files could not be downloaded.
Use the “source” option to specify the location of the files that are required to restore the feature. For more information on specifying a source location,
seehttp://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=243077. Error: 0x800f0906
At line:1 char:1
+ Install-WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra,Server-Gui-Shell -Source:wim:z:\ins …
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (@{Vhd=; Credent…Name=localhost}:PSObject) [Install-WindowsFeature], Exception
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : DISMAPI_Error__Cbs_Download_Failure,Microsoft.Windows.ServerManager.Commands.AddWindowsFeatureCommand
Success Restart Needed Exit Code Feature Result
——- ————– ——— ————–
False No Failed {}
Being the IT guy that I am, I start Googling, and find not a lot of information, or at least solutions for this problem. I figure, OK it is something with the mount directory, so lets just try and get what we need from the online source. This time I get a Could not Download from source error on the fail, again at 68%. Now we are at a point that doesn’t make sense. I can understand that after some updates, there might be an issue doing the switch from the DVD (and yes I even used the DVD itself as the source directly with the same problems), but not able to do it from the online repositories, like ti should, this has me baffled. I decide to try and delete the mountdir directory I had created in case it was looking at that at all, and of course, a bunch of files cannot be deleted due to access issues. Yeah, I know that at this point I should just reinstall server core from the start and try again, but I now have a huge challenge on my hand, and can’t let it go so easily, even though it does push back my studying schedule.
I then decide to run another round of updates on the system to see if that is why the online repositories are not able to update the system as they should be able to. I also go against what the book says, and do all updates and not just the recommended ones. Well, that of course fails also, which brings me to the point of making the decision to wipe and start from scratch or continue finding an answer to the problem. I decide to try one more thing and from a recommended link in a post on the Microsoft forums I type in:
Dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:ServerCore-FullServer /featurename:Server-Gui-Shell /featurename:Server-Gui-Mgmt
This comes back with an error 0x800f0906 which says the source file cannot be downloaded. A quick Google search for that error comes up with it relating to the .NET framework 3.5.1. I figure, enough is enough for now and decide to reload Server Core from scratch and try to do the switching without doing any updates from Microsoft. That’s the lucky thing about it being a single test machine that I have nothing to worry about on. Start again from the beginning. I am sure Microsoft never intended for this process to take over 3 hours to get running properly, but again, that is the joy of new technology, you never know what can happen.
While starting form scratch, I did a bit more research to find that this is a known problem. After the reload, and before setting any server information or doing any updates, I was able to go through the steps for switching to the Minimal Gui without the error. The big question I have is why would Microsoft make it so difficult to do the switching the first time between Core and Gui when it is one of the great new features they have touted?