Andreas M's Windows Home Server AddIns

This is the third in a series of blog articles highlighting some of the non-obvious features of my popular Advanced Admin Console Add-In (AAC) for Windows Home Server. You can find a German version of this article over at www.home-server-blog.de.

Users of the Advanced Admin Console Add-In should be able to perform any administrative task on their Windows Home Server with it. As with everything, there’s always more than one way to do things. While many users are quite happy with graphical user interfaces and using the mouse there are others who value the lightness and speed of text-based command line interfaces. Advanced Admin Console contains links to the classic Windows Command Prompt (cmd.exe) that has been part of Windows NT-based operating systems since the dawn of time, as well as to the “new” Windows PowerShell.

Windows PowerShell is Microsoft’s object-oriented command-line shell and scripting language. It’s way more powerful than cmd.exe. However, it’s not preinstalled on Windows Home Servers so when you try to launch it from the AAC toolbar you’ll receive the following error message:

So in order to be able to use Windows PowerShell on your server you will have to install it first. The easiest way to do that is by using my Update History AddIn.

Windows PowerShell is available as an optional update on the Windows Update website. Simply click on “Launch Windows Update” on the “Troubleshooting” menu of the Update History AddIn:

On Windows Update click “Custom”:

After searching for available updates is complete, click “Software, Optional” and select “Windows PowerShell 1.0 for Windows Server 2003 (KB926139)”:

Now click “Install updates” and wait until the selected package has finished installing.

From now on you can launch Windows PowerShell from the AAC toolbar:

If you haven’t worked with PowerShell before you should visit the Windows PowerShell website to get started.

PowerShell 2.0 was released by Microsoft back in October 2009 but since it’s not available on Windows Update I wouldn’t recommend installing it on your server.