Windows 2003 Server or Windows XP?

[Nomans]

MoonshineMadness, I'm not sure it's just my stuff or Microsoft has actually DISABLED Direct3D in the RC2 Windows 2003 .NET Server. Let me know how you sucessfully install Windows 2003 Server AND running UT2003. After I have sucessfully installed 2003 Server and UT2003, attempt to run the game failed. UT2003 displayed an error message saying Direct3D is not anabled. DXDIAG.EXE confirmed in the Display tab that Direct3D is being disabled. I didn't see how to enable Direct3D (I have tried this with both DirectX 8.1 required for UT2003 and with DX9 to no avail).

My rig: Gigabyte GA-7VAXP with XP 1800+, 512MB basic Corsair, Video card Gainward GF4 Ti4400, Antec 1080 AMG with 430 Watt PS, no overclocking.

Somebody from the forum mentioned why we're wasting time installing 2003 Server for gaming, he's right, it does not make any sense. I know, I'm just goofing around with it for fun.

 

[Nothinman]

I had no idea it was setup as such, but that is something I would really like to have. If one of our guys reboots my servers without talking to me first I sure as hell want to know why they did it.

I'm sure everyone will just put "Scheduled Downtime: software upgrade" or something because not all of them require the user to enter text.

 

[Nothinman]

Somebody from the forum mentioned why we're wasting time installing 2003 Server for gaming, he's right, it does not make any sense. I know, I'm just goofing around with it for fun.

Personally I prefer to 'goof around' in VMWare, so I don't affect my current installation.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Somebody from the forum mentioned why we're wasting time installing 2003 Server for gaming, he's right, it does not make any sense. I know, I'm just goofing around with it for fun.

Personally I prefer to 'goof around' in VMWare, so I don't affect my current installation.

or with a seperate HD, which he may very well be doing.

I'm sure everyone will just put "Scheduled Downtime: software upgrade" or something because not all of them require the user to enter text.

The problem with giving users rights on the servers...

-Spy

 

[Nomans]

Personally I prefer to 'goof around' in VMWare, so I don't affect my current installation.

Yeah right. I have an entire HDD dedicated for it, why not. HDDs are plentiful now. If I don't like it, I'll reformate the HDD or replace with a different HDD with another OS on it. This way I can keep all of my OS installations separate and intact.

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: snidy1
XP foresure

 

[Nomans]

The problem with giving users rights on the servers...

...or the key to server room. Not everybody can have access to the server rooms at will. So this eliminate the question of why do we have to justify a server reboot or shutdown. May be it's just for documentation purposes in the Event Viewer log?? That would help to narrow down the reason for the reboot. Still a waste of time for me though.

 

[Nothinman]

The problem with giving users rights on the servers...

I was lumping users, administrators, developers, etc all together. If you wanted to enforce logging of reasons for rebooting you would have set something up already and this little thing won't help much.

or with a seperate HD, which he may very well be doing.

I wouldn't even do that. MS has a tendency to do too many things behind my back, like upgrading the version of NTFS on filesystems.

Yeah right. I have an entire HDD dedicated for it, why not. HDDs are plentiful now. If I don't like it, I'll reformate the HDD or replace with a different HDD with another OS on it. This way I can keep all of my OS installations separate and intact.

And what do you do if Server 2003 upgrades your main OS partition's filesystem to a new version of NTFS and the original OS doesn't boot any more? I've seen that happen (try dualbooting Win2K and NT4 pre-SP4). VMWare is truely isolated, the only harm that can be done is contained in a restricted sandbox, if it breaks I delete the files it's in and I'm done.

 

[spyordie007]

I was actually refering to disconnecting your origional HD and than connecting a new one so that whatever you are working on cant alter your origional. I would love a copy of VM Ware to play with, but other (more important) things keep coming up that eat up my software budget before I get to buy fun toys like that :|

-Spy

 

[bsobel]

2000 gets my vote for now. I hope to hell they get rid of that stupid "Type your excuse for rebooting or shutting me down" section in the shutdown screen of 2003 beta 1 & 2, in the final version.

Just installed final bits this weekend at home (I'm a beta site and got the 180 day trial version of the RTM bits on Friday). It's still there and very usefull for server environemnts (it forces the admin to keep an audit log of why systems where brought down). You can turn it off (as I recall) in group policy somewhere.

Bill

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Nomans
MoonshineMadness, I'm not sure it's just my stuff or Microsoft has actually DISABLED Direct3D in the RC2 Windows 2003 .NET Server. Let me know how you sucessfully install Windows 2003 Server AND running UT2003. After I have sucessfully installed 2003 Server and UT2003, attempt to run the game failed. UT2003 displayed an error message saying Direct3D is not anabled. DXDIAG.EXE confirmed in the Display tab that Direct3D is being disabled. I didn't see how to enable Direct3D (I have tried this with both DirectX 8.1 required for UT2003 and with DX9 to no avail).

My rig: Gigabyte GA-7VAXP with XP 1800+, 512MB basic Corsair, Video card Gainward GF4 Ti4400, Antec 1080 AMG with 430 Watt PS, no overclocking.

Somebody from the forum mentioned why we're wasting time installing 2003 Server for gaming, he's right, it does not make any sense. I know, I'm just goofing around with it for fun.

Display Properties > Settings > Advanced > Troubleshooting

You should be able to figure it out from there.

 

[LeeTJ]

Originally posted by: NoSkillz
Look, just so you know I am going to school and have this available to me for educational purposes. I don't know if you consider it "piracy" if my school pays for it, but if you do, oh well. I am still wanting to know if it would be a wise switch. My school was able to get a hold of RTM release for an operating system/files class and posted that it would be available to students in the class. I don't know how exactly they can do this, but if it's there, why not?

no it's not piracy if your school has an arrangement with microsoft.

 

[Nothinman]

no it's not piracy if your school has an arrangement with microsoft.

Depends on what he does with his copy, those edu discount deals usually have extremely limiting EULAs.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

no it's not piracy if your school has an arrangement with microsoft.

Depends on what he does with his copy, those edu discount deals usually have extremely limiting EULAs.

especially for the server product lines, read the fine print carefully as they usually only let you use them for a set period of time such as the duration of the time you are in the specific class you need it for or while you are there at the school.

FYI With most of the Office educational licensing packages you can take it with you after you leave the school, for some of the desktop licences this might be allowed, but I dont know that there is a server licensing scheme that allows you to take it with you.

-Spy

 

[Shamrock]

everyone said the same thing about Windows 2000, and it has been the BEST gaming OS so far! now you are recommending XP over 2k3 server? hahaha, just reminiscing, I recall no one wanted Win2k because it was a "server" oriented OS. It became WIDELY used gaming OS

Give W2k3 server a chance, if you dont like it, or it starts behaving badly, just delete it

 

[Nomans]

Thanks a lot Jliety. It actually helps to enable Direct3D, but the game still doesn't run (UT2003 crashed with error message similar to "...No video found..."). DXDIAG test run of Direct3D revealed it has passed the test for DirectX7 with the spinning cube but failed in DirectX8 (test failed at step 5 (GetDeviceCaps). HRESULT = 08876086A (3D not available)). I'm running DirectX9 on the rig and the test for DirectX9 also passed. I know that UT2003 is a DirectX8.1 game and thus it doesn't really care or even notice DirectX9. Any further suggestion how to fix this DirectX8 problem?

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Nomans
Thanks a lot Jliety. It actually helps to enable Direct3D, but the game still doesn't run (UT2003 crashed with error message similar to "...No video found..."). DXDIAG test run of Direct3D revealed it has passed the test for DirectX7 with the spinning cube but failed in DirectX8 (test failed at step 5 (GetDeviceCaps). HRESULT = 08876086A (3D not available)). I'm running DirectX9 on the rig and the test for DirectX9 also passed. I know that UT2003 is a DirectX8.1 game and thus it doesn't really care or even notice DirectX9. Any further suggestion how to fix this DirectX8 problem?

I got that one tip from this article. Perhaps you could find more info there.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Shamrock
everyone said the same thing about Windows 2000, and it has been the BEST gaming OS so far! now you are recommending XP over 2k3 server? hahaha, just reminiscing, I recall no one wanted Win2k because it was a "server" oriented OS. It became WIDELY used gaming OS

Give W2k3 server a chance, if you dont like it, or it starts behaving badly, just delete it

You use Windows 2000 Server for games?

 

[n0cmonkey]

My only concern was based on money. If someone wants to use a server OS for games, they should go right ahead. I just hope I don't see too many "why won't <insert game company here> release patches so I can play <insert name of old boring game version 2389340> on Windows 2003 Advanced Datacenter Server?!"

 

[Nomans]

Thanks again jliechty. I followed the link and found a treasure of info related to Setup Windows 2003 Server as a workstation with DirectX9. I'll let you know whether it could help me fix the DirectX8 problem I've encountered in UT2003.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Shamrock
everyone said the same thing about Windows 2000, and it has been the BEST gaming OS so far! now you are recommending XP over 2k3 server? hahaha, just reminiscing, I recall no one wanted Win2k because it was a "server" oriented OS. It became WIDELY used gaming OS Give W2k3 server a chance, if you dont like it, or it starts behaving badly, just delete it

You don't know what your talking about. 2k was released in both a server and workstation flavor (w2k pro). 2003 server is being released as a server version (the workstation release is ONLY for the ia64 platform). The XP release was the original release of the workstation flavor of this rev of the OS. XP is much more designed for gaming that the 2003 release.

Bill

 

[spyordie007]

I just ran into this Windows 2003 server FAQ that helps to bring some light to this question:

Windows Beta - FAQ
Why do games not work on the Windows .NET Server Beta?

Answer:
Windows .NET does not support game applications. Many of the functions needed to play games are either disabled or not present at all. Enabling this functionality is an unsupported configuration.

Simply said: don't play games on Windows .NET. Period.

I really like the approch to not including anything unnecisary in the next line of server products.

-Spy

 

[spyordie007]

FYI DirectX (and all of hardware acceleration) is also disabled and they recommend leaving it disabled.

Just like a server should be, get rid of all the crap and only run what you need to. Gives you the best possible performance, stability, and security.

-Spy

 

[HarryAngel]

Originally posted by: NoSkillz
Who said anything about money? ;-)

 

[techwanabe]

I'm taking the Windows 2000 MCSA classes right now. My instructor calls Windows 2003 Windows 2000.1. IOW, it is a much more incremental increase over 2000, much more so than 2000 was over NT server. Of course, I haven't had a chance to look at the features myself.