It’s been well documented that updates for Windows 10 (such as the 1607 Anniversary update) will cause issues with interfacing to the 2012 R2 Essentials Server. Two things in particular:

• Workstations will have a status of Offline on the Essentials Dashboard
• More importantly, client workstation backups are not up to date

Until now, the process that I had taken to resolve this on each workstation was as follows:

• Drop workstation to Workgroup
• Login as local administrator (not domain)
• Run http://{servername}/connect
• Use domain admin login and password to proceed, when prompted
• Approve (acknowledge) you want to use the domain admin login
• Complete rejoining to the server
• Reboot workstation and login as domain user

Well, now, it comes to pass that we can make this process a bit faster, as we can eliminate the first two steps (dropping workstation to a workgroup, and logging in with the local admin account).

So here’s how the steps now look, while remaining logged in as the current domain user account:

• Run http://{servername}/connect
• Use domain admin login and password to proceed, when prompted
• Approve (acknowledge) you want to use the domain admin login
• Complete rejoining to the server
• It’s possible to just logoff and log back in as the current domain user. However, I still like to reboot the workstation just to make sure all is fine.