You have logged onto Windows Server many times and you find that you only have to wait for Server Manager to finish loading. This becomes annoying that you need to wait when you mostly log onto your server and want to complete a specific task that does not require a Server Manager.
This article will show you how to disable Server Manager at startup for all users using group policy or PowerShell and save you some time.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Today’s post is not related to Virtualization or Cloud topics.
If there is one thing irritating me when I log on to Windows Server is Server Manager.
When you log on to a server, the Server Manager application is automatically launched for you. Sorry thank you, I don’t want this!
How to disable Server Manager?
The easiest way to disable Server Manager is from the server manager dashboard itself.
From the Server Manager console, click Manage and click Server Manager Properties. On the Server Manager Properties window as shown in the figure below, check the box “Do not start Server Manager automatically at logon“, and then click OK.
Server Manager in Windows Server is a management console that helps many IT professionals to manage both local and remote Windows-based servers from their desktops. The admins don’t require either physical access to servers or an RDP connection.
Did you move from managing your servers from Server Manager to Windows Admin Center? Windows Admin Center is a freely available management tool for anyone to use and makes managing a set of servers with or without GUI remotely, very easy, especially for “day-to-day activities”.
> Check how to deploy Windows Admin Center in High Availability mode.
What if you want to automate this process and disable Server Manager at startup for all users?
Disable Server Manager at Startup Using Group Policy
To disable Server Manager for all servers and all users, you can leverage Group Policy under:
Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | System | Server Manager
Double-click on: Do not display Server Manager automatically at logon, and set it to Enabled and click OK.
Once the policy is applied, you can test by logging in to a server. The server manager shouldn’t be launching at startup.
Another way to test if the policy has been applied is by checking the Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) set of policies on the server by running the gpresult/v cmdlet, which will display verbose policy information. This includes detailed settings that were applied with a precedence of 1.
Disable Server Manager at Startup Using PowerShell
If you are not using Active Directory in your environment and you want to automate this behavior for all users… What you can do is use PowerShell!
And what is surprising is that Server Manager is a scheduled task under Task Scheduler.
You can run the following PowerShell command on any Windows Server:
Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName ServerManager | Disable-ScheduledTask -Verbose
Or you can use the command prompt cmd window and run the command below:
schtasks.exe /change /tn "MicrosoftWindowsServer ManagerServerManager" /disableThe server Manager is gone forever now 
Cheers,
-Ch@rbel
