Windows 10 Workstation Shows Offline Status and No Backups from 2012 R2 Essentials Dashboard

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.