Tag Archives: Windows Server 2012

How to Add “Desktop Experience” to Remote Desktop Session on Windows Server 2012 R2

I setup a Windows Server 2012 R2 remote desktop server today. I wanted to add the desktop experience for the remote desktop users. I couldn’t seem to find the role I needed to install. After a little research, I found it is actually quite simple to do. Here is how to add desktop experience on a Server 2012 R2

Open Server Manager > Add Roles and Features > Role-Based or Feature-Based InstallationServer 2012 Role Based Installation

Next select the server that you want to add this feature to. Continue to hit next until you come to the “Features” installation screen.  Scroll down the available features until you find User Interfaces and Infrastructure. Expand the menu and Select Desktop Experience.Desktop Experience Server 2012 R2

Click the box beside Desktop Experience and go through the rest of the prompts to install this feature. You may need to reboot your server to finish installation. That is all there is to it!

If this tip helped you, please follow me on Twitter @techspeeder and follow my YouTube Channel. This was posted by techspeeder.

Hat Tip: GD Bloggers

Configure Email Notification for Windows Server 2012 Windows Backup

I can’t find anywhere in the Windows Server 2012 (R2) settings to allow an email notification when a server backup completes successfully. Windows Server 2012 Essentials has a nice feature that you allows you to get email reports on your backup status. This helps keep tabs on your server without logging in everytime. I wanted a similar notification for when a Windows Server 2012 backed up successfully.

After some research online this is how I found to accomplish this task.

Part One of Tutorial

Lets create a Powershell script. This script will allow us to send email.

Use this Powershell script. Please note your username and password isn’t encrypted. There are ways to encrypt your password but the following tutorial doesn’t show you how to.

$EmailFrom = “notifications@somedomain.com”
$EmailTo = “me@earth.com”
$Subject = “Notification from XYZ”
$Body = “this is a notification from XYZ Notifications..”
$SMTPServer = “smtp.gmail.com”
$SMTPClient = New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($SmtpServer, 587)
$SMTPClient.EnableSsl = $true
$SMTPClient.Credentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential(“username”, “password”);
$SMTPClient.Send($EmailFrom, $EmailTo, $Subject, $Body)
Just change $EmailTo, and username/password in $SMTPClient. For the credentials don’t include @gmail.com in your username.

Thanks to Christian Muggli for this script.

Log into your Gmail account and make sure two factor authentication is turned off. Also make sure less secure apps are enabled. Visit this site https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps to find out if it is enabled or not. If it isn’t enabled you will get this error message.

Powershell SMTP Server ErrorThe SMTP server requires a secure connection or the client was not authenticated. The server response was: 5.5.1 authentication required. Continue reading