How to use Device Manager, Disk Management and other Microsoft Management Console GUI tools in Windows Core (including Hyper-V Server)?

Windows Core installations lack access to some very basic tools as default. Managing disks and partitions is still quite easy to handle using ”diskpart” command line tools, but managing devices can be a real pain using only ”pnputil” in Windows Command Prompt.

Windows basic management tools like Microsoft Management Console (”mmc.exe”) is not included in Windows Core as default but it can be installed quite easily using PowerShell. This brings you an option to use graphical interface tools (GUI tools) to manage devices, drivers, disks, partitions, volumes etc.

This also works in Windows Hyper-V Server (2019 tested).

Please note: Installing AppCompatibility package requires restart. So, there is down time to be scheduled in production systems.

Justs run Microsoft PowerShell from command prompt with the following command:

powershell

Use the following command to install Server Core Application Compatibility Feature:

Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name ServerCore.AppCompatibility~~~~0.0.1.0

As a final step do a reboot:

shutdown -r -t 0 -f

After reboot you should be able to start Microsoft Management Console with command ”mmc”, Device Manager with ”devmgmt.msc”, Disk Managent with  ”diskmgmt.msc”, Computer Management with ”compmgmt.msc”.

You can find a list of most common Windows Server Management Console files (*.msc) below. Not all are available in every install. Roles or features might need to be installed for some of the files to be available.