Installing PaperCut NG/MF on Windows Server Core

Q Does PaperCut NG/MF run on Windows Core editions? In short, yes, as of version 10.6, PaperCut NG/MF can be installed to Windows Server Core editions to provide a print management solution. However, customers are advised that Windows Core requires advanced System Administration skills and experience to deploy and manage successfully. Q How does the installation differ from a typical install? When installing PaperCut NG/MF to any supported Windows Server Core edition, you need to use command-line tools to start the PaperCut NG/MF installation. The installer does not have problems running in the limited environment that Windows Server Core provides. Once this installer process has been completed, you will be prompted to open a web browser to complete the install configuration. This will need to be performed remotely as the Windows Server Core environment generally does not have a web browser. Q I tried running the installer, but nothing displayed on the screen? You may need to run the installer with the command line option of /silent or /verysilent. You can modify defaults further by referring to our guide on installing PaperCut NG/MF via the command line. Q Are there any other gotchas I should know about? Yes. We’ve heard reports from customers that reports fail to generate when running PaperCut NG/MF version 19+ on Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2. The reason for this failure is that this version of Server Core is missing a DLL (d2d1.dll), which is a dependency of another DLL (awt.dll) which in turn is required for the 3rd party library (OpenJDK 11) we use to generate reports in version 19 and above. Thankfully we know of a few different ways to get this working. Manually copy the d2d1.dll file from C:\Windows\System32\d2d1.dll on a non-Core version of Windows to <PaperCut installation path>\runtime\win64\jre\bin. Then restart the server. Install the Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra feature of Windows to obtain the d2d1.dll. To do so, open PowerShell, mount the DVD or ISO to the D: drive, run Install-WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra -Source wim:D:\sources\install.wim:2, then restart the server. Or simply upgrade to Windows Server Core 2016, which does include this DLL. Still have questions? Let us know! We love chatting about what’s going on under the hood. Feel free to leave a comment below or visit our Support Portal for further assistance.