For some reason, Microsoft doesn’t like the idea of the average user running server as their desktop, but for those of us who develop SharePoint and don’t want to go through the hack of installing it on Windows 7 it can be rather limiting.

I use virtual machines for some custom development, but also run Server 2008 R2 locally or remote into servers to do work/research.  One slightly annoying feature is the lack of user tools like the drive cleanup and all my lovely video codecs.  Enter the Desktop Experience feature…

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Unfortunately, codecs for H.264 and AAC are missing on Server 2008 R2.  Microsoft has KB2483177: Update for Desktop Experience Decoder for Windows Server 2008 R2 available to fix this issue.