By doing a bit of research I found out that removing .NET 4.5 can cause Windows Server 2012 to malfunction. I was curious if it would also cause problems when .NET 3.5 and .NET 4 (not 4.5!) are installed and .NET 4.5 is deleted?
1 Answer
If you want to know what exactly can go wrong with uninstalling .NET 4.5, just run:
Remove-WindowsFeature Net-Framework-45-Features –WhatIf
And you'll be provided with information "what if?" that is features and roles that will be uninstalled too. Most of them are GUI interfaces of Windows Server 2012. It can also be quite problematic to go to Server Core
server mode and then trying to go back to at least Minimal Server Interface
or to GUI
mode without .NET 4.5 Framework.
Article from TechNet: Removing .NET Framework 4.5/4.5.1 removes Windows 2012/2012R2 UI and other features
Yet, you can force applications to run with .NET 3.5. You must remember that .NET 3.5 is optional for Windows Server, so it is possible to install it but it's not up there as a standard (on the other hand, .NET 4.5 is installed with MS Windows Server 2012).
Also see: .NET Framework 4.5 is default and .NET Framework 3.5 is optional
Either way .NET 3.5 and 4.0 won't interfere with each other (I understand that you want to run .NET 4.0 only if required by application?). Nevertheless, I can't understand why would you like to abandon .NET 4.5 and add .NET 3.5 and 4.0 in place of that.
Windows Feature
like any otherWindows Feature
so, it is indeed possible, to run Windows Server 2012 without the .NET Framework.