A machine is shown as Inactive in Server manager when it is not.

A. Sometimes Server Manager fails to see a machine has become active, you can attempt to force it to see the machine by typing:
C:> net use \\<machine name>\IPC$

If this fails it may be the machine has been configured to be invisible to the network such as if hidden from Network Neighborhood as seen in 'Q. How do I hide a machine from Network Browsers?'.

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