Tips & Tricks : Enabling Wireless Network in Windows Server 2012 Datacenter edition

by | Mar 15, 2013 | Infrastructure, Network, Scripting, Windows | 16 comments

If you want to use Windows Server 2012 Datacenter on workstation/laptop (sometimes it is handy to have mobile workstation with server operating system) you might experience issues with wireless networking. Even if driver for wireless network adapter is installed you might not be able to connect to any wi-fi network.

In order to use wireless in Windows Server 2012 Datacenter additional feature has to be installed: Wireless LAN Service. This can be installed from PowerShell prompt using add-windowsfeature wireless-networking command, as shown on screenshot below:
win2012-wireless-01

Once installed and server rebooted make sure that WLAN AutoConfig service is started, as shown on screenshot below:

win2012-wireless-02

16 Comments

  1. Aswin Pribadi
    Aswin Pribadi on July 14, 2013 at 4:15 pm

    Thank you!

  2. appreciate your help
    appreciate your help on February 22, 2014 at 1:18 am

    Thanks for this post, it was very helpful

  3. AP
    AP on June 16, 2014 at 8:21 pm

    Life Saver! Thank you

  4. Matthew N
    Matthew N on October 15, 2014 at 2:30 pm

    Guy you are the best.
    It was soooo helpful

  5. muba
    muba on January 14, 2015 at 3:48 pm

    thank you only your solution worked because despite adding feature service was stopped so I had to enable it 🙂

  6. Topon Chandra Debnath
    Topon Chandra Debnath on March 28, 2015 at 11:32 am

    Thanks a lot for this tips.

  7. karamat ullah
    karamat ullah on May 7, 2015 at 4:58 pm

    oh. i love u. very helpfull. i was thinking about how i can enable it. and now its here. thanks alot

  8. fadhli
    fadhli on January 14, 2016 at 1:38 am

    Thank you sir, you help us alot

  9. Mike R
    Mike R on January 14, 2016 at 1:54 pm

    very helpful especially starting the wlan service

  10. Mehedi hasan dipu
    Mehedi hasan dipu on February 15, 2016 at 10:58 am

    Before complete this system do i need to configure Network Driver

  11. zo
    zo on March 21, 2016 at 12:45 am

    did not work for me at all still fails. thanks anyways

  12. SKufel
    SKufel on March 21, 2016 at 7:23 am

    Any specific error message you get?

  13. bern
    bern on April 23, 2016 at 12:10 pm

    for me also… wont work.. try to restart the server.. waiting .. 🙁

  14. bern
    bern on April 23, 2016 at 12:16 pm

    my mobile unable to connect… services already running…

  15. Fakru
    Fakru on April 12, 2017 at 9:15 am

    It’s work for me….thanks lot.

  16. Patrick
    Patrick on September 11, 2017 at 12:40 am

    Great!!!
    Worked perfectly for my Win server 2012R2 on HP envy 750-424 Desktop.

    Thank you so much

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