Table of Contents

Switch Windows Server 2012 between core and GUI

Convert initial Core to GUI

  1. Mount the Windows Server 2012 ISO to the host.
  2. open an administrative command prompt
  3. mkdir c:\mount
  4. check your wimfile to determine the correct index for the OS (mine was 4) -the command is dism /get-imageinfo /ImageFile:d:\sources\install.wim
  5. dism /mount-wim /wimfile:d:\sources\install.wim /index:4 /mountdir:c:\mount /readonly
  6. powershell (enter PowerShell prompt)
  7. install-windowsfeature server-gui-mgmt-infra,server-gui-shell –restart –source c:\mount\windows\winsxs
  8. Unmount Wim (dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:c:\mount)
  9. Remove Mount Directory (rmdir c:\mount)

Alternative is to install directly from WIM

  1. Install-WindowsFeature server-gui-mgmt-infra,server-gui-shell -restart -Source wim:d:\sources\install.wim:4

Convert GUI to Core

This will not remove the install files, so you can later use the single line add-windowsfeature commend (without all the steps above). To completely remove the binary files, add –Remove at the end

  1. Uninstall-WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Shell, Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra
  2. Shutdown –r -t 0 (Reboot)

Convert Core to GUI

You can do this if you allready have GUI feature files on your system

  1. Install-WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Shell, Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra -restart
  2. Shutdown –r -t 0 (Reboot)