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Installing Windows Server 2022 on Intel NUC lab computers

This content is 3 years old and may not reflect reality today nor the author’s current opinion. Please keep its age in mind as you read it.

Microsoft have quietly slipped out Windows Server 2022 and eager beavers are already starting to install it in their labs. I’ve got it running on Intel NUCs but these instructions likely work with other hardware too.

Those of us with Intel NUCs (“Next Unit of Computing”) are used to driver challenges given the hardware packed into these tiny boxes, and will not be disappointed this time either. Various devices won’t install/start, most notably both wired and wireless network devices so you’ll need to copy drivers over via USB.

You’ll be pleased to know that Windows Server 2022 does install on hardware at least as old as series 6 (e.g. NUC6i5SYH) which already had support for Windows Server 2019, but earlier than that and YMMV. I was able to install it simply by double clicking the ISO downloaded from the Microsoft Evaluation Center (“Download the ISO”) and running setup from there, but you could also burn it to a USB and boot from that.

Incidentally, I tried to burn a USB with Boot Camp Assistant on macOS (which presumes it’s creating media to install locally and wants to remove all devices etc. first), Microsoft Download Tool (which seems to have disappeared in favour of the media creation tool which may run from the browser?), balenaEtcher, and even copying the files to a freshly formatted drive, but to no avail. I didn’t need it in the end so never mind.

Downloading & Extracting Drivers

First find the drivers for your device, either by searching for the system itself (e.g. NUC6i5SYH) or the device. For the latter you may want to find the PCI vendor (e.g. 8086 for Intel, no prizes for guessing why) & device IDs (e.g. 24F3) from Device Manager by right clicking, selecting Properties, then “Hardware Ids” from the Details tab. Google them (i.e. “8086:24F3”) and you should be able to find the driver page easy enough, but the driver installer likely won’t work.

Extracting the drivers from any executables you download is left as an exercise for the reader, but try right clicking, installing a third-party tool like WinZip or WinRAR, or running it (e.g. lan-win10-25.6.exe) and copying the files out from under it while it waits for you to click through the wizard (%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Temp is a good place to start looking).

You’ll then want to go back to Device Manager, right click for Properties, and select “Update Driver” from the Driver tab. You don’t have a network so “Browse computer for drivers” and find the directory (e.g. WiFi_22.70.0_Driver64_Win10) for the downloaded drivers.

Ethernet Networking

To get wired networking going you’re going to need to find and extract the relevant driver for your device (e.g. PCI ID 8006:1570 which is the “Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I219-LM” in the Intel® Ethernet (LAN) Network Connection Driver for Windows® 10 for Intel® NUC download), then select the relevant subdirectory like PRO1000\Winx64\NDIS68.

Wireless Networking

Apparently servers don’t need wireless so you’ll need to activate the wireless feature first. This can be done from Powershell:

Add-WindowsFeature -Name Wireless-Networking

You’ll then want the relevant drivers, in my case the Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260 which includes both Wi-Fi (Windows® 10 Wi-Fi Drivers for Intel® Wireless Adapters) and Bluetooth (Intel® Wireless Bluetooth® for Windows® 10). Both have options for IT Administrators which include the full suite of drivers should the Windows 10 drivers not work.

Bluetooth

The BTH\MS_BTHPAN device needs a Microsoft driver installed, but you don’t need to download it. Right click on the offending device for Properties, then select “Update Driver” from the Driver tab. “Browse my computer for drivers” and “let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer”. Choose the relevant category or all drivers, find Microsoft, and install the “Personal Area Network Service”.

Consumer Infrared (CIR)

ACPI device ITE:8713 is the ITE Tech* Consumer Infrared (CIR) Driver for Windows® 10 64-bit for Intel® NUC which you can download, extract, and install as above.

Others

Newer devices likely have support for hardware like Thunderbolt which may need different drivers.