I am trying to use CEF via CefSharp in .NET/C# to take screenshots offscreen. This works for desktop and server windows OSes but I have recently found that it does not work on Windows Server Core OSes. These are stripped down versions of Windows without the "Desktop Experience", i.e. a number of UI features and tools.
From what I can tell, the primary issue is that file dxva2.dll is missing. This relates to DirectX Video Accelation and is included with the desktop server install. Tracing the dependencies of CefSharp I am able to see this is used by libcef.dll which is part of the base CEF project, so I am asking here as there might be some people with more knowledge of this dependency.
I am able to copy the dxva2.dll dll from a full server install and get my application to work. However this is not really a legitimate way for me to distribute it as far as I can tell. So I am trying to find out if I can either
1. Disable any features that might load this component. This seems like it might be possible since I have tested using chrome in headless mode to take screenshots successfully on Server Core.
2. Install dxva2.dll properly on Windows Server Core. I have tried installed the "Media Foundation" windows feature but that did not seem to have an effect. dxva2.dll is not present and is still required to run the application.
I have tested this with CefSharp version 83, which uses CEF version 83.