server 2012 Installation on PowerEdge 840

Hello.

The fact that Server 2012 is not a supported OS on the PE 840 because of unavailable supporting drivers for its hardware, there is agood chance that it may not successfully install. We recommend that you Install supported OS.

Good news, it IS now possible to install Windows Server 2012 R2 on a PE840.

First, create a bootable USB thumb drive from the Windows 2012 R2 ISO using Microsoft's free Windows USB/DVD download tool available at:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool

Then, set the boot order in the PE840 BIOS to boot from this device first.

Now, boot from the thumb drive and Windows 2012 R2 installs until it says it needs to reboot.

Remove the thumb drive or change the BIOS boot order so that it doesn't boot from the thumb drive again.

Windows 2012 will boot up the 2nd part the setup and complete it successfully.

NOTE: The PE840 must have one of the later BIOS versions that supports booting from a USB flash drive / thumb drive. Some of the earlier PE840 versions don't support booting from a thumb drive.  The ones that do refer to it as "hard drive emulated usb flash drive" or something along those lines.