All Answers

Now that you’ve mentioned it… I do recall that there was an issue with the Windows Media Player stuff (it’s been many years since I last looked it). More than likely, Microsoft removed WMP from Windows Server 2016 and that’s why they abandoned their media streaming pack in Essentials 2016. You’ll probably need to chase down all of the files, etc. required by the Windows Media Player sharing service (etc.) and add it to 2016 in order to get things working. Probably not a trivial task to accomplish I would imagine.

As for changing the Dashboard color scheme… I’ve never messed around with doing any of that stuff before, but it appears that there are a couple of goofs within the XML file example that Microsoft lists on their documentation page that are preventing it from working properly. I was able to get it working by doing the following to their XML example:

Change “https” to “http” within the DashboardTheme line.

Rename “ClientSignInButtonBackColor” to “ClientSignInButtonNormalBackColor”.

I then named the resulting XML file as “CustomColors.xml“, placed it within the “C:\Program Files\Windows Server\Bin\OEM” folder of the server, and set the value of the “CustomColorScheme” Registry key to (without using any quotes):

C:\Program Files\Windows Server\Bin\OEM\CustomColors.xml

After performing those changes, the XML file should be properly loaded by the server Dashboard when it starts. You can confirm this by looking at the Dashboard.log file that’s found within the following folder of the server:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Server\Logs

It should show something like this if everything went okay (otherwise it’ll show you the error that’s preventing the color scheme from being loaded properly):

[6124] 220824.073346.0991: General: Color branding started
[6124] 220824.073346.0991: General: Processing Microsoft default SKU branding colors XML
[6124] 220824.073346.1056: General: Branding colors XML parsing started
[6124] 220824.073346.1056: General: Branding colors XML parsing ended
[6124] 220824.073346.1056: General: Looking for OEM branding colors XML
[6124] 220824.073346.1213: OEMBranding: Found no value for (CustomColorScheme) in language (en-US), return default value (C:\Program Files\Windows Server\Bin\OEM\CustomColors.xml)
[6124] 220824.073346.1213: General: OEM informations available
[6124] 220824.073346.1213: General: OEM branding color scheme found: C:\Program Files\Windows Server\Bin\OEM\CustomColors.xml
[6124] 220824.073346.1213: General: Branding colors XML parsing started
[6124] 220824.073346.1213: General: Branding colors XML parsing ended
[6124] 220824.073346.1213: General: Color branding complete

From there you should be able to adjust the colors accordingly (you can get the HEX colors codes that you need from here: https://htmlcolorcodes.com). Just be sure to restart the server Dashboard each time you edit the XML file so that it reflects the changes that you’ve made to the color scheme (and look in Dashboard.log if something goes wrong for an idea of what happened).

Best of luck, and be sure to share your finished dark color scheme for the server Dashboard (and/or Launchpad) so others can enjoy it as well.

I really appreciate it Mike! I got the Dashboard to load the xml. I’ll be working on tweaking the UI to my liking for a bit, but I’ll be sure to post the finished theme.

That would actually be a neat add-in (theming and OEM branding configuration)

I don’t have much experience with coding, but it’s something I’ve been curious about for a long time (specifically essentials add-ins) The amount of functionality you could get out of Home server v1 was mind blowing with all the various add-ins. It’s a shame there weren’t more for the 2011/essentials platforms as I can think of quite a few features that would be pretty useful. Any tips/resources you can provide for add-in development?

As for the media streaming stuff, at least under 2022 with media foundation installed, windows media player is there, as is the network service, etc. When you go to change advanced sharing settings, all networks, then click on choose media streaming options, the page fails to load. I’ll either figure this one out, or I won’t. Curiousity as to whether I can has seemed to gotten the better of me for the time being. lol

Yes, a theming and OEM branding add-in would indeed be really nice. That’s probably a great idea for you to run with if you’d like to start developing your own Essentials add-in.

A great place for you to start would be the Windows Server Essentials SDK… It walks you through the basics of creating Windows Server Solutions add-ins for the server Dashboard, Launchpad, Remote Web Access, etc.

Using the Windows Server Essentials SDK

Windows Server Essentials API Reference

There’s also a Windows Installer package file for installing the Windows Server (2012 R2) Essentials SDK, which has the pre-configured Visual Studio projects, offline documentation, etc. in it, but apparently it’s no longer available for download directly from Microsoft any longer (which is sad). However, if you would like it, then please feel free to send me a message (via our email support form), and I’ll be more than happy to share a copy of it with you.

Lastly, you might also want to familiarize yourself with a good .NET assembly browser and decompiler program, such as ILSpy, so that you can explore the source code behind Microsoft’s existing Windows Server Essentials assemblies (seeing as there’s a HUGE wealth of information to be gleamed from those files).

Good luck!

Unfortunately the client wasn’t willing to pay for something that they couldn’t trial, so we went down a different route. I’m now trying to uninstall WSE RemoteApp from the Essentials dashboard, but get an error:

“WSE RemoteApp 1.255.1961.0 cannot be removed

The add-in package was not uninstalled.”

Since this is not an application in the traditional sense, is there another way of removing it?

If the “WSE RemoteApp” add-in isn’t listed on the “APPLICATIONS” page of the server Dashboard, or if it fails to uninstall from there for whatever reason, then you can do the following in order to uninstall it:

0. Close the server Dashboard.

1. Sign in to the server as an administrator, and from the administrator’s desktop, open the Registry Editor (i.e. right-click on Start → Run → regedit.exe), and go to the following registry key branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

2. Look through the subkeys of that branch until you find the one that’s for WSE RemoteApp (i.e. locate the one that has a “DisplayName” value of “WSE RemoteApp XXXX Windows Server Solutions Add-in“), and then double-click on its “NoRemove” entry and change it from a 1 to a 0.

3. Open the server’s “Programs and Features” Control Panel applet (i.e. right-click on Start → Control Panel → Programs → Uninstall a program [or → Programs and Features]), locate the “WSE RemoteApp XXXX Windows Server Solutions Add-in” program in the list of installed programs, and then go ahead and uninstall it from there instead.

Alas, I have no idea what could be going on there seeing as I’m not able to replicate that issue over here on any of our in-house test servers (i.e. the feature works just fine for us here, and to date, no one else has reported a similar issue/error that I am aware of). As for exactly what the feature does… It simply runs the following script on the server (and unrolls it when you tun the feature off again):

Setup Microsoft Windows or IIS for SSL Perfect Forward Secrecy and TLS 1.2

If you opt to disable TLS 1.0 as well, then that is also performed via the above script, and the “SchUseStrongCrypto” and “SystemDefaultTlsVersions” settings are added to the registry as per Microsoft’s guidelines here:

Transport Layer Security (TLS) best practices with the .NET Framework

Sorry that I don’t have a better answer for you on this one.

Im also sorry for having issues with the RemoteApp software.
its fairly sure that during the disabeling of the TLS 1.2 specs, the software broke a few IIS options.

I just found out that:

using %servername%
%servername%/Connect

BOTH give an 500 error,

While

%IPaddress%

%IPaddress%/Connect

BOTH are working (showing/displaying atleast)

I dont have a client to retest the working of the connector software.

=============================================

probably 1 of the bugs is, when you ‘disable’ HSTS, the option of actually disabeling wont work.

The 2 greyed-out boxes are indeed ACTIVE on:

IIS > Default Website > Action section > Advanced Settings > HSTS tab

=============================================

The only issue now is why does the IIS only work on IP level?
where did the ServerName go to?

Thanks, that did it, although I had to restart the IIS process as it was locking RDweb.log. It was also still showing as an application in the Essentials console, although this time I was able to remove it.

I’m not aware of any issues with the VPN feature of Essentials that are specific to using WSEE under Windows Server 2022 (i.e. AFAIK, the feature should be working just fine). Unfortunately, I don’t use VPN (since we always use Microsoft’s SkipDomainJoin connection method to prevent our clients from joining the domain), and so I can’t give you too much guidance there I’m afraid.

I do know that VPN was broken while running under Windows Server 2019, but as far as I am aware, that problem didn’t carry over to Windows Server 2022. You can however take a look at what I posted about that issue over here, just to make sure that everything is properly set.

Other than that, here’s a Microsoft article that talks about troubleshooting common VPN issues in Essentials… The specific error that you’ve mentioned is listed in the document, and so maybe the fix they offer will help you out.

Troubleshooting Common VPN issues on Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials

I’m sorry that I don’t have a better answer for you on this one.

I’m not able to replicate this one under 2016, 2019, 2022, or vNext (i.e. the server Dashboard is opening remotely just fine for me here from any connected client computer; both domain joined or SkipDomainJoin connected clients) and so I’m not exactly sure what could be going on there. Sounds like something over on your end (firewall, etc.) is blocking the remote connection. Other than that, are you certain that both your Essentials server, and your client computer has all of the latest Windows Updates installed on them?

I don’t know why I had this issue, but I decided to reinstall WS2022 and everything and it solved my issue. Thanks anyway for your reply.

Thanks Mike