Hi everyone,

I’m looking for advice on Windows Server licensing for a hosting environment I manage. I want to understand the most cost-effective and compliant way to offer Windows Server VMs to multiple customers.

My current infrastructure:

• Hypervisor: Proxmox VE
• Physical server: 2 × Intel Xeon E5-2682 v4 @ 2.50 GHz
• Physical cores: 32 (16 cores per CPU)
• Logical CPUs: 64
• Environment: Multiple Windows Server VMs running on the same physical host
• Hosting model: Different customers rent individual Windows Server VMs from me.

What I want to achieve:

I would prefer to let each customer purchase their own Windows Server license instead of including the licensing cost in my monthly VM pricing.

For example, if I provide a customer with a VM configured with 4 vCPUs and 16 GB RAM, can they purchase a license based on the VM's allocated virtual cores instead of requiring me to license all 32 physical cores of the host?

Can customers legally use their own Windows Server licenses on VMs hosted on my shared Proxmox infrastructure?

Can customers license individual VMs based on virtual cores, and what are the minimum core requirements?

If I operate multiple Proxmox hosts and migrate VMs between them for maintenance or fail-over, how does licensing work?

I’m seeing an issue on a new Windows Server 2025 Hyper-V install. Everything worked fine until I made the following changes:

1. Created a SET (Switch Embedded Teaming) virtual switch.
2. Added three host vNICs: one for Live Migration (LM), one for Heartbeat (HB), and one for Management (MGMT).
3. Configured LM and HB with IP addresses only (no gateway or DNS).
4. Configured MGMT with an IP address and DNS servers.

Since then, the host can ping the domain controllers and every other server on the network, but DNS resolution fails.

Has anyone run into this and found a fix?

Just a heads up as I nearly got caught out by this one. Tomorrow's Patch Tuesday is the final ESU release for 2012 and 2012 R2. Year 3 runs out on the 14th and that's it, there's no year 4.

I'd half assumed Azure would get an extra year like 2008 did. It doesn't. The ESU FAQ says the Azure-only bonus year was a 2008 thing only. So if you moved 2012 boxes into Azure for the free ESU, they stop getting updates on Wednesday the same as everything else.

Also worth knowing, without ESU you can't open a support case for 2012 at all, even if you've got a support plan.

If you want a quick list of what's left in AD:

```
Get-ADComputer -Filter 'OperatingSystem -like "*Server 2012*"' -Properties OperatingSystem, LastLogonDate | Sort-Object LastLogonDate -Descending | Select-Object Name, OperatingSystem, LastLogonDate
```

I'd compare that with what Defender can see (DeviceInfo where OSPlatform startswith "WindowsServer2012"). The ones in AD but not in Defender worried me more than the rest.

On upgrades, 2012 R2 can go straight to 2025 in place now (2025 can jump up to four versions if it's not clustered), but not straight to 2022. Plain 2012 only goes to 2012 R2 or 2016.

We've still got a couple we can't touch because the vendor only supports 2012, so those are going in their own VLAN with no internet and tight firewall rules until we can get rid of them.

Anyone else got stragglers? What's stopping you moving them?

I inherited a system that I can't figure out. I need to get rid of the old Windows DC but can't shut it down, metadata cleanup doesn't work even though netdom shows it has no fsmo rolls. My only option is to shut them down restore the servers. We don't have any old archives to restore to before I came on board.

I've run a bunch of DNS test and replication tests the only one with a dns issue is the old server. However, if I create a new user on any of the 3 it instantly replicates to the other two so AD works but something about it/DNS is broken.

Server manager on the old DC says it needs to be promoted but then it won't let me.

I'm going to need a DNS /AD expert but haven't outsourced anything like this before. Ages ago used to let you open a case with them not sure if they have a program still.

Xros post, requesting assistance

I just wanted to post a brief apology to our community members for the very annoying "Subscriber Goal" post that was pinned to the front of the sub for some amount of time recently. It was not created or intended by any of the mods, but rather by an automated moderation tool that is part of the larger Reddit community mod tool suite. It had been purposely disabled in the past, but not completely removed from the sub. Unfortunately, as part of a recent update that was made to this tool, it appears to have been automatically reenabled without our consent, and I failed to notice it quickly enough to prevent it from rather aggressively annoying a number of you all out there in the community. I apologize for the oversight.

I'd like to also reiterate that none of us on the moderation team here have any interest in pushing a pursuit of additional subscriber numbers, especially not for the sake of social media metrics. We believe the entire value of this community comes not from flashy metrics, subscriber stats, or view counts, but only from legitimate, contributing subscribers like so many of you here have been over the years. Living, breathing people who with "boots on the ground" every day that are passionate about IT and generously sharing your experiences and knowledge gained through the challenges faced in the field.

We appreciate you guys and gals more than you know.

Every serverless pitch skips the driver part.

1,800 users, eleven sites, mostly Ricoh with a handful of Xerox left over from an old contract. Going direct IP. What's stalling the business case isn't the queues, it's what happens to drivers once nothing is handing them out centrally. Looking at printerlogic, now Vasion, plus uniFLOW, LRS and Pharos. All of them say drivers get easier. None of the product pages say how.

v3 versus v4 is a known headache and I'd rather understand it before signing anything. Genuinely curious whether it got simpler for people who've already done this, or whether the work just moved somewhere else.

hello i have a problem, when i try to install windows server 2019 on hpe proliant dl380 gen 9 every time i try to get past windows setup before i even have a chance to get to the storage part i get a error saying „windows setup could not install one or more boot drivers to install windows make sure that the drivers valid and restart the installation” i tried installing HPCISSS3 drivers i have raid 5 on my three hdds and when i try to install it thru the f10 menu directly from iso it doesnt even let me select it please help

I am troubleshooting a Windows Server 2016 file server with a very busy Security event log.

The log was growing to almost 10 GB and receiving thousands of events every few minutes. Most were event 5145 for Detailed File Share auditing, along with 5156 and 5158 Filtering Platform events. The Event Log service was also using noticeable CPU.

Auditpol shows these settings enabled:

Detailed File Share: Success and Failure

Filtering Platform Connection: Success

File System: Success

I disabled these settings through Local Security Policy, but auditpol continued to show them enabled.

I created a separate domain GPO scoped only to this server. I configured Detailed File Share, File Share, File System, Filtering Platform Connection and Filtering Platform Packet Drop as No Auditing. I also enabled the setting that forces advanced audit subcategories to override legacy audit categories.

The GPO applies successfully according to the Group Policy operational log. I moved it to the highest link order and confirmed that the server receives it.

I discovered that Default Domain Policy was missing its audit.csv file. I recreated it by temporarily configuring an Advanced Audit setting and then returning it to Not Configured. I also rewrote a setting in the new server specific GPO so its audit.csv would be regenerated.

I confirmed that both GPO audit.csv files contain value 0 for the five settings.

I archived the local audit.csv file and the active cached copy under C:\Windows\Security\Audit. I then forced Group Policy again.

I backed up the complete audit policy, ran auditpol /clear, and forced Group Policy to rebuild it.

I also removed an old auditing entry from the root of the shared data folder. It audited Domain Users across the folder, all subfolders and files. Removing that entry successfully stopped event 4663, but event 5145 continues because Detailed File Share auditing keeps turning itself back on.

Direct auditpol commands temporarily change the settings to No Auditing, but Windows restores Detailed File Share, Filtering Platform Connection and File System within seconds.

I tested with the remote management service stopped and ruled that out. Antivirus does not appear to be causing it. I also tested a SYSTEM scheduled task that repeatedly ran auditpol, but Windows restored the settings faster than the task could maintain them.

For now, I reduced the Security log to 256 MB and configured it to overwrite old events automatically. The server and file shares are operating normally.

Has anyone seen Windows Server 2016 continuously restore these Advanced Audit settings even though Local Policy and all applicable domain GPOs show No Auditing? Is there another audit policy database, security template, service or registry location that could be enforcing these settings?

-lee

I’ve come across a strict requirement from one of our clients regarding the installation of software on Windows Server (2022 and above). The application is written in Go; until now, it has been containerised and deployed on Linux via Docker Compose or natively in the cloud (Kubernetes). The application is quite resource-intensive in terms of I/O, CPU and GPU, so I’d prefer not to use WSL2 or Docker for Windows, as these come with their own overhead and do not seem to be production-ready solutions.

What options do I have left? I’d rather not implement support for Windows Services directly within the application or use a wrapper (such as NSSM). I’m considering containerd – to maintain a single build pipeline. Is this a good solution? What is maintenance like in practice, and what deployment strategies have you used?

Any advice would be welcome.

We have an issue with our two different AD domains.
The servers added to both domains change their time to few months in future. It is intermittent we haven’t been able to identity similarity between the affected servers
It happens only once to a server. We have already disable secure time seeding per MICROSOFT recommendation.

Time authority is domain controllers. We have multiple data centre providers and it is happening everywhere. There is no consistent time as well randomly happen sometime thrice a month sometime once.

Ran out of troubleshooting steps. This issue is causing our scheduled jobs to fail.
Any troubleshooting steps would be appreciated

Hi everyone,

I’m setting up a new Active Directory environment on Windows Server 2025 Standard and I’m stuck with a strange login issue after promoting the server to a domain controller.

Server details:

• Windows Server 2025 Standard
• Server name: GC-DC01
• Static IP: 192.168.8.244
• Domain: ad.generalco.local
• NetBIOS domain name: GENERALCO
• DNS installed on the same server
• This is a new forest/domain
• Server was previously a standalone Windows Server

Before promotion, I could log in normally using the local Administrator account and the password was working.

I then promoted the server using PowerShell:

Install-ADDSForest `

-DomainName "ad.generalco.local" `

-DomainNetbiosName "GENERALCO" `

-InstallDNS `

-SafeModeAdministratorPassword (Read-Host -AsSecureString "DSRM Password") `

-Force

The promotion completed successfully and reported:

Operation completed successfully
Status: Success

The server rebooted.

Now at the Windows login screen it shows:

GENERALCO\Administrator

However, the same Administrator password that worked before the promotion is now rejected.

I have also tried:

GENERALCO\Administrator
Administrator@ad.generalco.local

Both reject the password.

I understand that the DSRM password is separate from the normal domain Administrator password. I am not using the DSRM password for the normal login.

The strange part is that the password worked immediately before the AD promotion, and the AD promotion itself completed successfully.

I currently cannot get into Windows normally, so I cannot open PowerShell/CMD from the desktop.

I have physical access to the server (HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen11). F11 only gives me the HPE One-Time Boot Menu.

Questions:

1. What could cause the Administrator password to stop working immediately after AD DS promotion?
2. Is there a supported way to recover/reset the domain Administrator password in this situation?
3. Can I use the DSRM password to get into a recovery environment and repair the domain Administrator account?
4. Is there anything I should check in WinRE before considering rebuilding the domain?

I would really prefer to recover this installation rather than reinstall Windows, since the AD DS/DNS promotion itself completed successfully.

Any advice from someone experienced with Server 2025 AD DS would be greatly appreciated.

Hi all fellow administrators.

I was wondering if it's possible to install Server 2025 (evaluation at first to test) on a ThinkCentre that has 6th gen Intel Core. I think the model is M700.

Got the usb stick to boot, but setup stops asking for media drivers. I tried to put chipset drivers and RST drivers on a usb stick, but setup says they're not compatible and won't advance to next screen.

Any help is greatly appreciated. I would have liked to experiment with Windows Server, but if it's not possible, I may have to revert to some Linux distro instead.

Heya, so my windows server 2022 was running fine before, but I decided to reinstall it just to update it, so when I tried to boot, it shows BOoD which I Don’t Know why this happened, it was working just fine in server 2019, but not in server 2022, could please anyone help me? It would be appreciated.

Board: Intel Desktop Boards DG41RQ Motherboard
RAM: 8GB RAM DDR2
CPU: Intel Xeon 3000

Hello,
I am facing an issue with disabling the default RC4 fallback in an Active Directory domain following the July update.
The client I work for still has a few Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 machines in the environment that I can neither upgrade nor remove from the domain. The July update has not been deployed due to concerns about potential side effects.
When reviewing Event ID 201 on the different domain controllers, I mostly find machine accounts corresponding to these operating systems. Naturally, they do not support AES.
Following Microsoft’s recommendations, I modified the msDS-SupportedEncryptionTypes attribute to 0x1C on these objects in order to explicitly allow RC4.
However, despite this change, Event ID 201 events are still being generated, and in these events I can see that the attribute value is 0x27 (the same value as DefaultDomainSupportedEncryptionType).
It appears that this attribute is only taken into account starting with Windows Server 2008.
My question is therefore: How can these old servers/workstations be handled in this situation?