How to Completely FUBAR a Windows Server 2012 R2 Install

RobertKaucher

I am very thankful that this was just my dev laptop, I would have been a lot more careful had it been a production or even test server.

I had previously done a SharePoint 2013 install on the system but it became a bit redundant as I have moved my development environment to Azure. So I decided to go in and uninstall SP, do an in-place upgrade to R2 and then remove and IIS. When I did this I removed the IIS and Application Server roles and everything under them and as I was doing this I was carrying on a conversation with my other teammates. I didn't notice that I had selected both .Net Frameworks 3.5 and 4.5... Because why would Windows allow you to remove components that are required for it to function? I rebooted and did not get a desktop. I thought, "That is odd, did I remove the GUI on accident? Why am I unable to run PowerShell? WTH did I just do?" Of course this required a reinstall because I couldn't get anything to run to add back .Net 4.5. Keep that in mind boys and girls when you are removing the IIS/Application server roles on a server. You can literally get into a situation where the proverbial keys are locked in the car and your baby is trapped int he back seat on a hot summer day.

sratakhin

Now I want to try removing .NET Framework just to see what happens. Time to migrate VMs to another Hyper-V host