How to Enable Wireless Network (Wi-Fi) on Windows Server

By default, wireless network (Wi-Fi) support is disabled in all Windows Server 2025/2022/2019/2016/2012R2 versions. You won’t be able to enable a Wi-Fi network adapter (USB or PCI) through the Network Connections Control Panel if you plug it into a host running Windows Server. I will show how to enable wireless support on Windows Server in this short note.

Enable Wireless Networking Support on Windows Server

Connect a physical Wi-Fi adapter to a Windows Server host and install the drivers. Make sure that the new adapter has appeared in the Network Adapters section of the Device Manager (devmgmt.msc).

In my case, the Wi-Fi adapter appeared in Device Manager, but the system could not initialize it.

Windows cannot initialize the device driver for this hardware. (Code 37)
The request is not supported.

Open the PowerShell console as an administrator and check if the Wireless LAN Service is missing:

Get-WindowsFeature *Wireless*

Use the Install-WindowsFeature PowerShell cmdlet to add a feature on a Windows Server:

Install-WindowsFeature -Name Wireless-Networking

Or install the Wireless LAN Service via the Server Manager (Add Roles and Features -> Features).

After the installation is complete, reboot the host:

shutdown –f –r –t 0

After the restart, the Wireless LAN Service (WLAN AutoConfig) appears in Windows, but it is disabled by default. Run the service and change its startup type to automatic:

Set-Service WlanSvc –startuptype automatic –passthru
Start-Service WlanSvc –PassThru

Then, navigate to the Network Connections section in the Control Panel (ncpa.cpl) manually enable the Wi-Fi adapter (right-click it and select Enabled).

Enable Wi-Fi using the Quick Settings panel accessible from the taskbar.

You can now connect to the Wi-Fi network you need (you can check the signal strength of available Wi-Fi access points via PowerShell ) or even create a Wi-Fi access point on your Windows Server.

Install-WindowsFeature : ArgumentNotValid: The role, role service, or feature name is not valid: 'Wireless-Networking'. The name was not found.

Unable to Install Wi-Fi Drivers on Windows Server

Some Wi-Fi adapter vendors restrict the installation of drivers for desktop wireless adapters on Windows Server operating systems, citing the need for specialized equipment in server environments. This type of OS version lock is typically configured in the driver’s INF file. In particular, I encountered issues installing the Wi-Fi adapter driver with Broadcom and some Intel devices.

This article details how to bypass driver INF file restrictions and successfully install network adapter drivers on Windows Server.