While Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 have essentially the same kernel there are components and features in Windows Server 2008 that in certain scenarios make it a better operating system choice than Windows Vista, for example I perform a lot of demonstrations and the ability to run Hyper-V is essential and so I set about making Windows Server 2008 a lot more friendly as a day to day operating system. I’m going to focus on 64-bit Windows Server 2008 since to use Hyper-V you need the 64-bit but if you are using Windows Server 2008 32-bit you would use 32-bit components such as Windows Vista 32-bit drivers.
In this article I walk through some of the key areas I performed to make Windows Server 2008 a highly usable operating system for my desktop. The steps I detail are generally not dependant on each other and you may select to perform some steps and not others.
Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 share a common architecture so most Windows Vista drivers will work for Windows Server 2008 and because a 64-bit driver is needed for hardware to be Windows certified we are fortunate that for most modern hardware a 64-bit Windows Vista driver is available to run on our Windows Server 2008 64-bit hardware.
For the hardware on your server download the Windows Vista 64-bit driver and install. I’ve not come across hardware that will not work with the Vista 64-bit driver so hopefully you will be lucky. If you are looking to run enhanced graphic functions such as Windows Aero with desktop composition you will need a fully functional graphics driver.
To emulate Windows Vista we need to enable a few features and for Hyper-V a specific role. The Desktop Experience feature installs components like Windows Media Player, photo management, video codecs and desktop themes so you will want this feature. You will probably want to also install the Windows PowerShell feature, Windows Server Backup Features and the Wireless LAN (WLAN) Service.
Where possible BitLocker is also a fantastic feature to enable. We can install these features via the Add Features Wizard of with the commands below.
Servermanagercmd –i BitLocker
Servermanagercmd –i Desktop-Experience
Servermanagercmd –i PowerShell
Servermanagercmd –i Backup-Features -allSubFeatures
Servermanagercmd –i Wireless-Networking
The following answer file can be used to install all the features needed which can be installed using “servermanagercmd –inputPath 2008desktop.xml”.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><
ServerManagerConfiguration Action="Install"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sdm/Windows/ServerManager/Configuration/2007/1">
<Feature Id="BitLocker"/>
<Feature Id="Desktop-Experience"/>
<Feature Id="PowerShell"/>
<Feature Id="Backup-Features"/>
<Feature Id="Backup"/>
<Feature Id="Backup-Tools"/>
<Feature Id="Wireless-Networking"/>
</ServerManagerConfiguration>
You will need to reboot the server after installing these features and once the reboot is complete you can install the Hyper-V role which will require another reboot however you should install the final version of Hyper-V which is available as update KB 950050. Hyper-V can be installed via the Add Roles wizard or using the “servermanagercmd –i Hyper-V” command.
Once you have installed a suitable graphics driver and installed Desktop Experience we can use themes under Windows Server 2008 but first we need to enable the themes service and set to start automatically at reboot. We can achieve this with the following commands (you must type the space between the equals sign and auto).
Sc config themes start= auto
Net start themes
Once enabled you can access Windows Color and Appearance to enable a theme such as Windows Aero if your graphics driver meets requirements.
You should also ensure you have audio drivers installed and start the Audio service to enable audio playback.
Sc config audiosrv start= auto
Net start audiosrv
The first change to make is to configure the operating system to give priority to foreground applications which we achieve via the System control panel applet:
We can optionally enable Super Fetch to improve performance but before we can we have to enable via the registry. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters and create two DWORD values named EnablePrefetcher and EnableSuperfetch. Set the new values to three. We can now set to start automatically (sysmain is the internal name for superfetch).
Sc config sysmain start= auto
Net start sysmain
This is because the Multimedia Class Scheduler in Windows Server 2008 is configured to reserve 100% of the CPU for lower priority tasks in the event of conflict which means anything running on the system can always override media playback. To resolve change the following registry value to a number less than decimal 100, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile\SystemResponsiveness. Windows Vista uses a setting of 20 so you could try that value. More information on this setting and other more granular settings can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684247.aspx.
By default Explorer only shows the icon for the file type and not the content however we can change this behavior via the View tab of the Folder Options dialog (accessed via the Folder Options control panel applet or via the Tools - Folder Options menu item within Explorer).
As shown below unselected the "Always show icons, never thumbnails" and click
OK. Thumbnails of file content will now be displayed instead of the files icon.
We also probably want to enable the details pane which involves two steps.
The first step is to turn off classic folder view which we achieve via the
Folder Options dialog (Tools – Folder Options) and select “Show preview and
filters” in the Tasks section. Now select Layout from the Organize menu and
enable the panes you wish to see, for example Details.
Windows Server 2008 includes the Windows Search service as part of the File Services which is required for many types of search operation in the OS and even applications such as Outlook and One Note. A newer version is available, Windows Search 4 as part of update KB 940157. The 64-bit version for Vista and 2008 is available at http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/7/3/87393551-5469-417E-B7D2-A71B40167D74/Windows6.0-KB940157-x64.msu.
There are other changes you may want to make such as disabling the need to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to logon and disable the shutdown event tracker. Both are done via changes to the local policy:
You can disable the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security via Server Managers main page via the "Configure IE ESC" link in the Security Information and disable IE ESC as shown.
The latest versions of Live Messenger consists of a very small initial installed which performs checks on the system and if the system meets requirements then the installer downloads the full Messenger installation MSI and installs automatically.
The messenger initial installer will not install on Windows Server 2008 even though messenger itself runs fine on Windows Server 2008.
To install we need to bypass the initial installer that performs the operating system check and directly install the messenger MSI file. There are numerous methods to obtain the Live Messenger installer:
The later is the safest option as you know the source of the files you are using.
There are a number of cool gadgets for the Windows Sidebar that are useful on a server so I really wanted to get the sidebar working on my Windows Server 2008 boxes. The solution is as follows.
o Regsvr32 atl.dll
o regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\sbdrop.dll"
o regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\wlsrvc.dll"
o "C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe" /RegServer Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Compatibility]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Settings]
"SidebarDockedPartsOrder"="0x1,0x2,0x3,0x4To add additional sidebar gadgets save the .gadget file to a folder on the local computer and then double click the gadget file to add to the sidebar.
You’ve probably enabled Hyper-V and by now you will have noticed you can’t put the box into Hibernate or Suspend anymore. That is a by-design feature of Hyper-V. Also if you are using Hyper-V make sure you use a separate physical disk for the virtual disks.
You now have a Windows Server 2008 box running similar to a Vista box. Obviously you need to ensure you are running anti-virus software and other protection. Most Vista solutions will work on Windows Server 2008.
If you are not using Hyper-V seriously consider the value in all this effort. Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 share the same kernel and so you probably will not see a huge different using server 2008 as a desktop OS over a properly tuned Vista SP1.
Copyright 2008 John Savill, http://www.savilltech.com. No part of this document may be copied without permission.