hi, im wondering if anybody can help me, this is the first time ive tryed server 2008 x64. i had vista ultimate x64 before. anyway, my problem is, i added a feature with, i think it was the desktop experience pack and .net 3.0 framework from the server manager that opens on startup, well. it asked me to restart to complete the installation. now everytime it starts it trys to complete the installation and 'microsoft management console has stopped responding' comes up everytime i start, its really annoying and i cant open it back up again when the machine is running, when i try to open server manager, it opens computer manager insted and i really need the functionality to add more features! please can someone help me. thanks

What happens if you run oobe.exe?

Have you tried servermanagercmd.exe from a command prompt?

Did you maybe stop/disable any services manually before adding the features?

hi, thanks for the reply. as far as i can see, nothing atall happens when i run oobe.exe. whats it suppost to do?
as for servermanagercmd.exe. how do i use it? i havent disabled any serveice. only enabled services. but thats after it started crashing. thanks

OOBE is the equivalent of "Manage Your Server" - the wizard that launches when an administrator first logs onto a W2K8 server, from where you can also add roles and features.
It maybe doesn't launch as the Server Manager wizard is hung in the background.
This is the complete reference for servermanagercmd, too much to reproduce here:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserve...3.mspx?mfr=true

To be honest, if you've not done much with the server so far, I would repair/clean install it.
If it is just for playing around with, fire it up in Virtual PC or something.

i use it as my main OS. i heard it performs better than vista, so i thought i would upgrade. a repair, does that involve. reebooting from the cd etc. ill try that to see if it helps. i had a go with servermanagercmd.exe but anything i try to do, i get in red:
ERROR: configuration was started by..... which required a restart so and so must log in to finish that configuration before other users may perform configurations.
anything you can suggest before i try to repair? thanks for your help =]

It's a very expensive way to get the same level of performance that Vista SP1 can provide - they are identical kernels, pretty much only the services installed by default differ... which typically are then added to Server to make it look like Workstation...
You are more likely to run into problems with some applications that refuse to run on Windows Server too.

The error message being returned is an indication that the OS knows it is still in the middle of a previous role or feature addition, so you can't start another until that completes.
I've not heard of your symptom where the feature installation simply becomes unresponsive, to even begin to think what you could have done - if it's not dependent services that have been disabled.

hi, thanks for all your help. but just to let you know i managed to get it fixed =] i inserted the disk while in windows and selected the updates option and let it update then, i went through the menu's chose my version and it let me choose the option of 'upgrade' so i chose that and after and hour or two. it had as good as reinstalled windows but left my programs, saving me the longproces of formating and reinstalling everything. Thanks