A web dashboard for Windows Server that installs with one double click.
No agent, no IIS, no external module, no database: a single PowerShell script publishes the page, and you open it from any computer on the LAN by typing the IP of the server.
Every small server ends up with the same question: what is it doing right now?
The usual answers are a heavy monitoring suite, an agent to install and keep
updated, or Remote Desktop and Task Manager. This project is the boring middle
ground: copy a folder, run Install.bat, and from then on the machine publishes
its own status page on port 8080.
It runs as a scheduled task called PiBOH Windows Server Dashboard, under
SYSTEM, starting at boot: the server can sit at the lock screen forever,
nobody needs to log on. The task carries a description explaining what it is,
and the software announces itself in the Windows event log at every start.
| Section | Details |
|---|---|
| CPU | total load, per-core bars, real clock speed, socket/core/thread count, temperature, trend chart |
| Memory | used / free / total, page file, installed modules (slot, size, speed), trend chart |
| Disks | one box per physical disk with bus and media type, containing its partitions: space used, file system and live read / write / busy per partition |
| Network | live download and upload with a colour legend on the chart (green = download, orange = upload), per-adapter figures, link speed, MAC, active TCP connections |
| IP configuration | IPv4, mask, gateway, DNS, IPv6, DHCP, per adapter |
| Operating system | Windows release (23H2, 25H2, ...), version and revision, build, manufacturer, model, BIOS, serial, install date, last boot, uptime, sessions |
| Processes | every process with the friendly name from the file ("Windows Explorer" for explorer.exe) as the main line and, right under it, the real image name (sqlservr.exe); PID, CPU %, RAM, threads, handles, full path in the tooltip; the dashboard's own row is highlighted so it can be spotted while scrolling |
| Services | the complete list with state, startup type, PID and log-on account |
| Events | critical, error and warning entries of the System and Application logs of the last 24 hours |
Tables sort by clicking the column headers, File Explorer style, and the choice is remembered by the browser. The Process column sorts by the name it shows, the friendly name, and the process table opens in that order (A to Z) instead of by CPU: with two hundred rows, a list that reorders itself at every refresh is hard to read.
1. Copy the folder to the server, for example C:\ServerDashboard\
2. Right-click Install.bat -> Run as administrator
3. When asked, type the optional password (or Enter for none) and choose
what it protects: the whole page or only the server options
4. From any PC on the LAN: http://<server-ip>:8080
The installer checks the machine first, applies only what is missing and prints every change with its BEFORE and AFTER value:
[+] Firewall rule "PiBOH Windows Server Dashboard 8080"
BEFORE : not present | AFTER : created (inbound, TCP 8080)
[=] URL reservation http://+:8080/
BEFORE : already reserved | AFTER : unchanged
[+] Scheduled task "ServerDashboard"
BEFORE : not present | AFTER : created, runs at boot as SYSTEM
[OK] AUTOSTART VERIFIED - no interactive logon needed
Uninstall.bat puts everything back exactly as it was, including a scheduled
task that happened to have the same name.
- Zero dependencies —
System.Net.HttpListener, part of Windows. IIS is not installed and port 80 is left alone. - Light on the server — metrics are sampled in tiers (CPU/RAM/network every cycle, processes every 5 s, disks every 10 s, services every 30 s, events every 60 s) and when nobody is watching the collector stops sampling completely, waking up within 250 ms of the first request. Since 1.16.6 nothing loads the Storage, NetAdapter or NetTCPIP module any more (the disk and network metrics come from the same WMI classes those cmdlets read, but without paying for the modules), and the JSON the browsers receive is built once per cycle instead of once per request. On a Windows 11 machine with Core Temp running and a browser refreshing every 0.5 s, over nine minutes, Task Manager's Memory column went from 35.5-203.9 MB to 15.2-127.1 MB and private bytes from 202.7-239.7 MB to 156.0-159.8 MB.
- Live by default: the refresh interval is 0.5 s out of the box, from 0.5 s to 5 min. While the page asks a password it is a choice of each browser; with no password there is one interval for everybody, changed in the settings panel.
- Light and dark theme, dark by default, saved per browser.
- About panel — click the version in the footer: who wrote it, the portfolio, the e-mail, and the changelog read from GitHub every time the panel opens. Nothing is stored or shipped with the package, so what you read is the published history.
- Works on any localized Windows — every metric comes from CIM/WMI classes whose property names are always English.
- Read-only by design — the page only displays: no command can be executed
on the server. The only thing a visitor can write is the dashboard's own
options (default interval, visible sections, logging, automatic updates),
from the settings panel. With no password set anyone who can see the page can
change them; the optional password (
.config-do-not-delete-me\pwd, asked by the installer) is what limits that: total closes the whole page behind a login, partial leaves the page open and locks only the server options, unlocked by a popup the moment one of them is clicked.
The interface is translated into every language Windows Server 2016 ships as a display language. It opens in the language of Windows, and each visitor can pick another one from the footer; the choice is personal and saved in their browser.
ar-SA bg-BG cs-CZ da-DK de-DE el-GR en-GB en-US es-ES es-MX et-EE
fi-FI fr-CA fr-FR he-IL hr-HR hu-HU it-IT ja-JP ko-KR lt-LT lv-LV
nb-NO nl-NL pl-PL pt-BR pt-PT ro-RO ru-RU sk-SK sl-SI sr-Latn-RS
sv-SE th-TH tr-TR uk-UA zh-CN zh-TW
Arabic and Hebrew switch the layout to right-to-left. Adding a language means
copying one XML file into lang\ and translating the strings: it shows up in the
picker by itself.
| Option | Stored where | Who can change it |
|---|---|---|
| Theme | browser cache | every visitor |
| Language | browser cache | every visitor |
| Refresh interval | browser cache | every visitor, while a password is set |
| Default interval | settings.txt |
the settings panel: everyone, unless a password is set |
| Visible sections | settings.txt |
the settings panel: everyone, unless a password is set |
| Logging on/off | settings.txt |
the settings panel: everyone, unless a password is set |
| Automatic updates | settings.txt |
the settings panel: everyone, unless a password is set |
settings.txt is a plain text file you edit with Notepad, and the same options
are in the settings panel of the page: with no password set, whoever is looking
at the dashboard can change them and Save writes them back into this file. With
a password set, a visitor has to type it first. Changes are picked up within ten
seconds, no restart needed, and every write is logged with the address it came
from. A request coming from another site's page is refused, so a page you happen
to have open cannot reconfigure the server behind your back.
windows-server-dashboard\
├── Install.bat install and start (as administrator)
├── Uninstall.bat undo exactly what the installer changed
├── Start-Dashboard.bat manual start, installs nothing
├── Stop-Dashboard.bat stop it
├── settings.txt server settings (auto-created, editable with Notepad)
├── scripts\ the engine, the updater and the helper scripts
│ └── version.txt the version: the single source of truth
├── lang\ the 38 translations
├── screenshots\ the images used by this page
├── Changelog\ CHANGELOG.md + release-notes\ (one file per release)
├── docs\ manual, logo, offline preview
└── logs\ one log file per day (auto-created)
The repository also carries _build\: the dashboard page is edited there
as three files (web\page.html, web\page.css, web\page.js) and
Embed-Page.ps1 writes the two copies there are out of them - the page
spliced into the engine, which is what ships, and the offline preview in
docs\, adding the preview block (preview\preview.js: sample data, the 38
dictionaries, the answers that stand in for the server) and the version from
scripts\version.txt. Embed-Page.ps1 -Check fails when either copy is not
what the sources produce, and the syntax check runs it on every push. That
folder is not part of the package: the release archive leaves it out and the
updater never copies it onto a server.
At every start - the scheduled task runs at boot as SYSTEM, so no logon is
needed - the dashboard reads
scripts/version.txt from the main branch of this
repository. When the remote version is newer it downloads the release tagged
v<version>, unpacks it and copies it over the current files, never
touching settings.txt or the logs, then restarts itself on the new version.
Everything is written to the log, and to the Windows event log under the source
PiBOH Windows Server Dashboard.
Since 1.16.4 each release also records its build commit, so republishing the
same version updates every dashboard too, and scripts\Update-Now.bat now
restarts itself as administrator - stopping and restarting the scheduled
task needs those rights.
auto_update = no in settings.txt -> disable it
scripts\Update-Now.bat -> check, stop, update, restart
Because of this mechanism, releases must always be tagged v<version>
(for example v1.16.0).
Open docs/Dashboard-Preview.html in any
browser: it is the real interface filled with sample data, all 38 languages and
both themes included. Nothing is installed and no network is used: the settings
panel behaves as it does on a server with no password, so Save changes the page
itself and writes nothing anywhere. It is generated from the same sources as
the served page (_build\Embed-Page.ps1), so it cannot lag behind it.
- Windows Server 2016 or newer (works on Windows 10/11 too)
- PowerShell 5.1, the one already in the box
- Administrator rights for the installation only
- 32-bit and 64-bit Windows both work: it is one script, run by whichever Windows PowerShell is installed
- CPU temperature needs a sensor: just
Core Temp running (the plain program, 32-bit or
64-bit - no add-on, its own CSV log works too), LibreHardwareMonitor or
HWiNFO, and the ACPI thermal zone only as the last resort (it is a zone of
the board, not the CPU, and the page says so); the page always names the
source it used, and writes the unit asked for in settings.txt
(
temperature_unit:autofollows the language of Windows,CorFforce it)
Run scripts\Diagnose.bat as administrator: it changes nothing and reports
the state of the scheduled task, whether the process runs and under which
account, what is listening on the port, the URL reservation, the firewall rule,
how the disks were detected and the last lines of the log, ending with a verdict:
>>> STARTS WITHOUT INTERACTIVE LOGON : YES
If it says NO, scripts\Repair-Autostart.bat rebuilds the task and the URL
reservation without reinstalling.
- Manual — every option explained, in ten short chapters
- Changelog — Semantic Versioning, from 1.0.0 to today
The dashboard has no authentication: anyone who can reach port 8080 sees the data. No command can be run through it, but the server options can be changed from the panel by whoever can see the page until a password is set, so if the server is exposed to the Internet either set one or restrict the rule to your subnet. A write coming from another site's page is refused and logged, so an open browser tab cannot change the options; a program that speaks HTTP by itself still can, and that is what the password is for:
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule ^
name="PiBOH Windows Server Dashboard 8080" ^
new remoteip=192.168.1.0/24MIT — do what you like with it, a mention is appreciated.