How To Turn Off The Automatic Display Of Server Manager At Logon

Although Server Manager is a one stop shop for administrating, configuring, managing and monitoring Windows Server 2008, sometimes I personally prefer not to always have the Server Manager automatically be displayed in front of me after each logon. Well, the good thing is yes you can disable this behavior, and this is done either by enabling the checkbox Do not show me this console at logon or by setting a Group Policy.

If you have a workgroup environment, then you can go to one server at a time and enable the checkbox or apply the policy locally on the machines.
If you have an Active Directory Domain Services environment, then you can set it using Group Policy Management Console.

To disable Server Manager automatic display after logon, follow these steps :

In Server Manager, under the Server Summary section, enable the checkbox beside Do not show me this console at logon as shown below

To Set it though Group Policy, then follow these steps :

1. Click on Start > Run
   
   
2. Type GPEDIT> MSC > hit OK
   
   
   
   
3. The Local Group Policy Editor snap-in will open
   
   
4. The policy that we are interested in can be found by expanding the following:
   
   Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Server Manager
   
   
5. Right click on the policy : Do not display Server Manager automatically at logon , click Properties
   
   
6. Select the RadioButton beside Enable > Click on OK
   
   
   
   
7. Close the Local Group Policy Editor snap-in
8. Click on Start > Run > type gpudpate > click on OK
   
   
   
   
9. To check if the policy is enabled, logoff  and then logon again, and you will notice that Server Manager will not automatically be displayed this time after logon
   

Summary

You might not need Server Manager to automatically be displayed after each logon, you have two options to disable this behavior. If you want to do this on a non domain server or you want to apply it on a single server, then either enable the checkbox beside Do not show me this console at logon or use the Local Group Policy Editor snap-in, if you have an Active Directory Domain Services environment and want to apply this on multiple servers, then use Group Policy Management Console to create/edit/link a Group Policy Object to the appropriate Organizational Unit(s)