Afternoon All,

If you used PowerShell to install the AD Domain services and DNS server roles on your Windows Server 2012 or 2012 R2 server, you may notice that you cannot find or open Active Directory Users and Computers, Domains an Trusts, Sites and Services, ADSI Edit and Administrative Center to perform your usual Active Directory operations.

The reason for this, is that the ADDS Tools are part of the Remote Server Administration Tools feature, which need to be installed alongside ADDS. When installing ADDS using Server Manager, installing this feature is a requirement.

add roles

However, with PowerShell you can mistakenly bypass this and be left without ADDS Tools installed.

To fix this, you can install ADDS Tools using the GUI in Server Manager, or run the following command  in PowerShell.

Install-WindowsFeature RSAT-ADDS

RSATADDS

When configuring any servers in future, you can use the following command to ensure that AD Domain Services, DNS and AD DS Tools are installed at the same time.

Install-WindowsFeature AD-Domain-Services, DNS, RSAT-ADDS

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