Connecting Windows Phone 7 with Windows Server 2008 R2

At home, I mainly use Windows Server 2008 R2 for development and general use. However, sometimes I find some applications only work with Windows home operating system (such as Windows 7 or Vista). I find this more frustrating when such application are from Microsoft themselves.

To connect a Windows Phone 7 device, Zune player needs to be installed. When you attempt to install Zune on Windows Server 2008 R2, you are prompted with the following message:

CAN’T INSTALL

Zune doesn’t support your current operating system. Supported operating systems:

• Windows 7 and Windows Vista
• Windows XP with Service Pack 3

Error code: 0x80070032

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=101226

To ‘walk round’ this needless limitation, open a command window with ‘Run as Administrator’ option.

Assuming you have downloaded Zune setup package to ‘C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads’ run the following command:

C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\ZuneSetupPkg.exe

This will extract the contents of Zune.

In explorer, navigate to [Package extracted location]\x64\packages and run ‘zune-x64.msi’.

Once Zune setup is complete, you will be-able to connect your Windows Phone 7 device to Windows Server 2008 R2.