Monday, February 4, 2013

Installing nVidia Consumer Drivers on Server 2012 Core for RemoteFX


I'm wanting to establish Microsoft RemoteFX in my lab, and to do so, one needs a dedicated 3d accelerator. Obviously, nVidia didn't make the drivers with Server 2012 (now 2016 as well, see below) Core in mind. To accomplish this, we need do the following:

1> Download the newest drivers from nVidia. (Note the later half of these points will probably work on ATI cards as well, you just need to unpack the drivers)
2> Execute the driver setup directly on core server the and select a temporary directory. 
3> Hit "OK"; the installer will crash because it's uncomfortable in the lovely world of server core.
4> Navigate to the display.driver directory underneath the extracted files in the temporary directory you selected earlier. You should find the .inf files in this directory. For nVidia it is nv_disp.if. Update 5/3/2015: the .inf file is now nv_dispi.inf, thanks bearkiter.
5> From cmd.exe, execute "pnputil -i -a nv_disp.inf"
6> The screen will blank! Don't be afraid. After completion, you should see a screen that looks like the shot below. (yes the borders are gone)
7> Assuming it's OK to do so execute "Shutdown /r /t 0" to reboot the machine.

I'm working on another article to cover VDI/RemoteFX. Stay tuned. Update: Article here.



Update 2/3/2017: Confirmed working on Windows 2016! Consumer grade hardware works in the lab as well.

19 comments:

Harry Heck said...

Hero Status sir!

Toby Meyer said...

Thanks @Harry, glad it worked for you!

bearkiter said...

Any update for later version of the drivers? The .inf mentioned is no longer in the package...

Toby Meyer said...

Hi @bearkiter,

Thanks for the heads up; I hadn't updated the drivers in awhile. The new .inf file is nv_dispi.inf. Just tried it on one of my servers and it worked fine:

C:\temp\nvdrv\Display.Driver>pnputil -i -a nv_dispi.inf
Microsoft PnP Utility

Processing inf : nv_dispi.inf
Successfully installed the driver on a device on the system.
Driver package added successfully.
Published name : oem5.inf


Total attempted: 1
Number successfully imported: 1

Article updated to reflect the change; much appreciated!

Unknown said...

Thank you so much for this! I'm on the 2016 hyper-V technical preview and needed to enable remoteFX using my spare GTX750!

Toby Meyer said...

@David Smith


Excellent, glad it helped! I'm happy to hear it works on 2016 as well as I haven't tried it as a Hyper-V host yet; I'm having issues with RemoteFX on Windows 10 with 2012R2 so I may be joining you soon.

Thanks!

MadDog said...

A bit late to the party... but does this install the NVIDIA control panel too?

Toby Meyer said...

Hey @MadDog!

Unfortunately no, just the driver. I suspect, but have not tested, that the CP may not work on core even if one were to get it installed because it may rely on Windows components that are not installed on the core platform.

Good luck!

GlennJacobsen said...

Thanks for this tutorial.
How about Windows Server 2016 Nano?

I'm setting up a new Hyper-V system, and I have a Quadro K4000 installed in one server. It would be great if it could be passed through to one of the virtual machines, or split between a few.

My experience with Nano is yet rather little, but Hyper-V + nVidia driver would be great!

Toby Meyer said...

Hi @NorDemoniac:

I was hoping to test this one myself, but ran into an issue preventing me from using Nano in the lab; that said I did find this post detailing the successful use of pnputil on Nano, so it is likely worth a shot. Another, perhaps better alternative, would be to inject the drivers directly into the image as outlined here. If you haven't accomplished this already, good luck!

marc said...

remotefx still not available in hyper-v settings although driver installed successfully as described ( hyper-v core free). installed remotefx service via server manager also. and help would be appreciated nvidia gt630

Toby Meyer said...

Hiya Marc! You may be missing other per-requisites; please see my other article here and give the steps a shot.

To follow-up on my earlier reply to @NorDemoniac, server core will not work with RemoteFX. Full info from Microsoft can be found here

Unknown said...

Excellent and detailed instructions, the author respect. I tried various installation options, even tried to use different versions of drivers, who need NVidia drivers download http://bitdrivers.com/manufacturers/nvidia. There you can find all kinds of drivers, it's very helpful, especially after reinstalling the system. I remember how much time I spent on finding and downloading drivers, especially if they are from different manufacturers.

marc said...

hyper-v 2016 core nvidia gt620 stuck on processing inf: nv_dispi.inf

Intoodeep said...

hyper-v 2016 core nvidia gtx1050 driver install successful. Thankyou!

Toby Meyer said...

@Intodeep, @marc, thank you both! Based on your feedback and my experience (success on a 6xx and 7xx series in 2016) I'm guessing that while older cards won't work, newer cards will.

Unknown said...

Brilliant.. Nice and easy when you know how... Thank you

Unknown said...

We had found that GTX680 was minimum required for this use in windows server.
GTX660, 650, 630, etc, do not support required features.
GTX680 worked well, GTX980, GTX1070, Quadro M4000, Quadro P5000, all worked for RemoteFX. Biggest PITA card for RemoteFX so far is (surprise) the Tesla P40.

Toby Meyer said...

Hey @Jordan, glad to hear it worked for you on Server 1903, that should help other readers as well. Thanks much!