Windows Server – Change to GUI or Core

Last updated on March 30th, 2023 at 05:15 pm

If you are using Windows Server 2012 or 2016 then you may want to change your server from GUI to Core for security purposes.

To do this, open up an elevated Powershell command box and run the following command:

Uninstall-WindowsFeature User-Interfaces-Infra

This will run through the uninstall of the GUI process and once complete, you should then reboot your machine. On reboot completion, you should notice that it is now server core.

If you want to reinstate your GUI, just  run this Powershell command:

Install-WindowsFeature User-Interfaces-Infra

Note: with the latest release of Windows Server 2016, this seems to be by default as core and these commands will not work on that version.

Comments

If you have any questions or feedback on this guide, please feel free to leave us a message below in the comments section.