Sunday, June 22, 2008

Windows workstation 2008

After obtaining a copy of windows server 2008 64 bit, I decided to use it as a workstation and replace the XP what I am currently running to take advantage of my 4GB ram.

So far:
  • It detects most of the drivers out of the box except intel bus thingy, BT, and my Creative Webcam Live. I was able to install intel chipset driver and BT driver, but it seems that creative no longer suppoert Webcam Live.
  • It can use most of the vista 64 bit drivers.
  • Hyper-V works, but needs winxp sp3 to install integrated pack.
  • My Netgear print server works, added the tcp/ip port manually by copying the values from xp. My Brother HL-2040 driver is built in.
  • http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/ is a good resource
  • So far seems quite stable and snappy. I think winxp is still faster on my machine, but server 2008 definitely feels faster than Vista (c2d e6850 + 4gb ram)
  • Have trouble activating, kept getting error code 0x800723B DNS name does not exist. Update: for some reason after I changed the product key (same one I entered when I installed) it activated successfully. I also found a potential solution here.
  • List of programs (will update as I go along)
    • Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition for Vista 64 bit (v10.2.0.298) works. Had to use my school's script to get live update working
    • Firefox 3 works, flash plug in also works
    • Live Messenger works, but need to get the offline installer. The integrated live installer won't install on server OS
    • Winrar 3.62 works
    • Open PCMan 2007 (a telnet/BBS client) works
    • Nero 7 Ultra Edition (7.8.5.0) works
    • Picasa2 2.7
    • uTorrent 1.8 beta (build 10853)
    • KM player. Works, but computer becomes a bit slow when playing videos.
    • DVDfab HD Decrypter 5.0.3.0
    • Itunes 7.6 (Had to disable Data Execution Prevention for AppleMobileDeviceHelper.exe)
    • Adobe acrobat reader 8.1.2
    • Adobe acrobat 8 (works after installing 8.1.x updates. The installer looks for AdobePDF.dll on vista cd-rom at the end, just cancel it and install the updates. See here for more details)
    • Visual Studio 2008

3 comments:

z6.8 said...

have you tried avg or avast on 2008 x64? Also, I recommend Infrarecorder x64 (infrarecorder.sourceforge.net) over Nero. I'm going to build a list of freeware for x86 and x64.

ghlu said...

i've not tried other antivirus software since I can get Norton for free. But thanks for the tip on the free recording software.

Motionless Mario said...

If you are using the MSDN downloaded version of Windows Server 2008, that is a VLK iso and by default looks for an activation server. When you change your key it changes to a MAK and then works. I had a similar problem. You can check out the details here.