Spoiler alert: the problem for me was a recent update from Microsoft: KB5011497
I recently had one of those days when reconfiguring a domain controller I’d been playing with to start using it properly but part of the process was a domain name changed and after doing that, I had all sort of weird behavior and failures.
As this was for a single machine, I figured I’d just rebuild the domain from scratch for a nice clean domain controller. As always, I updated the bios, got the latest drivers and applied the latest OS updates before doing anything else.
Frustratingly however, my Server 2022 deployments starting showing exactly the same behavior as my original dud one. I tried running it as a guest in Hyper-V on core, as a guest in Hyper-V on my laptop and installed bare metal – the same problem persisted:
The dashboard never became available
I was unable to add roles or features
On shutdown it would stick at “Waiting for the Windows Search” (bad grammer, this is the exact message)
It would always complain of a non-graceful shutdown on start up
On a whim, I decided to try again without the updates (it’s a new ISO downloaded so there were only a couple) and voila, it worked perfectly on all formats.
It appears the update in question is the KB5011497 and after a bit of Googling, it seems other people are reporting errors with it too:
Windows Server 2022: March 2022 update KB5011497 breaks remote desktop gateway role
I figured I’d post my finding here in case it helps someone,
