Can’t burn CD/DVD under Windows Server 2008 R2

I use run Windows Server 2008 R2 and today thought I had a hardware issue as all of my CD burning software was saying “Connect a burner and restart the player” (Windows Media Player) or “No recorders available” (Infrarecorder).

After some hunting about I found the following post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2010/02/19/windows-server-2008-r2-no-recording-tab-for-cd-dvd-burner.aspx

“By default accounts other than localsystem\administrator (regardless of the groups it belongs to) on server SKUS are considered to be “remote desktop” and so have the same security restrictions that come with remote desktop sessions.

In order to burn CD/DVD’S you can do one of the following:

• Login as localsystem\administrator
  
  
• Run a 3^rd party burning utility elevated
  

Note: You must have the Desktop Experience pack installed to get the built in Windows ISO burning applet.

Scott McArthur
Senior Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Enterprise Platforms Support”

I first tried the second solution but I assume that since Infrarecorder is fully Windows 7 aware there is no “Run As Administrator” option, yes, I could do RunAs from the command line but as I’m recording off of the network this still isn’t elegant.

So I gave in and logged on as local administrator and it all worked again. I’m not going to bitch too much as really I know most people won’t be burning DVDs on a server OS and I’m pretty unusual in using it as my desktop OS. Hopefully