We’ve been following Mariette Knap’s excellent site for all things Small Business Server – Server Essentials site and came across an issue installing Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials Role failed.

The error which was provided by the role wizard was not helpful at all (as always!);

 

So the next port of call was to examine the event viewer logs to see if we could gain any further understanding of the failure to install the essentials role. Sure enough an error was present at the time that the role installation failed;

The description of the Service Control Manager Event 7041 error provided the exact reason for the failure;

“The WseMgmtSvc service was unable to log on as domain.local\ServerAdmin$ with the currently configured password due to the following error:
Logon failure: the user has not been granted the requested logon type at this computer.

Service: WseMgmtSvc
Domain and account: domain.local\ServerAdmin$

This service account does not have the required user right “Log on as a service.”

 

So from the error description above, we can see that the ServerAdmin$ account does not have the user rights to ‘log on as a service’ and so when installing Windows Server 2012 R2 essentials role failed. A more detailed explanation of the event itself is provided by this Microsoft knowledge base 2914561 article.

So now we understand the issue at hand, this is how we fixed the issue.

First open the Group Policy Management Console, and then find the ‘default domain controllers policy’;

Then right click on the policy itself and select ‘edit’.

 

This will then open up a new window.

Click and expand the following,

Computer Configuration,

Policies,

Windows Settings,

Security Settings,

Local Policies,

and then finally end up at User Rights Assignment as shown in the picture opposite.

 

 

In the ‘details’ pane will be a list, scroll down that list until you locate the policy ‘Log on as a service’, once you find it then double click it, so that it also opens in a new window – which shows the ‘Log on as a service’ properties;

Make sure that the ‘Define these policy settings’ checkbox is ticked.

Then click on the ‘Add User or Group’ button.

 

This will allow you to add in the user as given in the Service Control Error 7041 earlier i.e. domain.local\ServerAdmin$

In your specific case this would be your domain name and then ServerAdmin$ once completed then click OK.

In our case we had to browse and then it would allow the ServerAdmin$ name to be selected. Once you have found the account, then click apply and then OK.

This will then add that account to those accounts which have the correct permission to ‘log on as a service’.

Close down all Group Policy Management Windows and finally open a command prompt as an administrator, and finish off with the command ‘gpupdate’.

 

 

Once the group policy has been updated, then click ‘Retry’ on the Configuration Wizard screen if it is still open or re-run the wizard again. If all goes well then you should see the following;

Finally you should get a confirmation that all is working fine;

That’s it you have successfully installed the Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials Role, we hope that this guide has helped you.

 

We’re Fox Information Technology and helping businesses with their IT is what we love to do.