Why Server 2008 [R2] over Windows Vista/7?

[aln688]

First off, I’d like to say this is a very impressive forum, great job. However, one question that I have is why? What are the reasons for using Windows Server 2008 [R2] over Windows Vista/7?

I’m currently trying out Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 (WS), and after booting with just video and network drivers installed, it consumes 1.30 GB of RAM. I don’t know how much RAM Windows 7 (W7) consumes, but I’m assuming it’s not quite as bad. I’m also aware of the features of both versions of Windows, for example W7 has System Restore, WS does not, W7 has a lot of services installed by default, WS is more of a menu, you install (via Roles & Features) what you want to use, and on and on.

Using WS is very similar to using W7, so why not just use W7 and turn off specific services, System Restore, etc. and speed it up slightly? Yes WS has Hyper-V, but VMWare is available for a price and Sun VirtualBox is free and works extremely well. Oracle and SQL Server install just fine on W7, as do all the development tools.

So far as I can see, after WS is modified to prioritize Processor Scheduling to Programs, Themes are turned on, CTRL+ALT+DEL is turned off, the Shutdown Tracker is turned off, what is the real difference between W7 and WS?

Thanks.

[JingoFresh]

You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head.

The differences are just the philosophies, for example server is minimal by default and allows for greater configuration, while 7 has ease of use as it’s priority.

They share the same codebase, and technically there really is not any difference. You can set tone to be almost identical to the other except for missing features, and any difference in performance will be negligible.

It pretty much comes down to features….ifyou like hyper v, group policy and such, and the minimalistic approach then server is choice. If you play a lot of games or do graphic design then 7 is a much better choice.

Oh. Some chaps around here may try and tell you that anything that is 64bit is without a doubt superior and that server os is definitely better performing and superior to 7 in every way. You should ignore them at all costs.

Look at the facts, and decide what works best for you.

[Anonymous]

You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head.

The differences are just the philosophies, for example server is minimal by default and allows for greater configuration, while 7 has ease of use as it’s priority.

They share the same codebase, and technically there really is not any difference. You can set tone to be almost identical to the other except for missing features, and any difference in performance will be negligible.

It pretty much comes down to features….ifyou like hyper v, group policy and such, and the minimalistic approach then server is choice. If you play a lot of games or do graphic design then 7 is a much better choice.

Oh. Some chaps around here may try and tell you that anything that is 64bit is without a doubt superior and that server os is definitely better performing and superior to 7 in every way. You should ignore them at all costs.

Look at the facts, and decide what works best for you.

[aviv00]

Server have less comps build-in to it
so its make it less heavy cos
there much less regs in hive system
less files
that may makes server better in performance

i dont really get why windows 7 needs all its stuff like dvd maker
media center and on ..

OS should be neat clean all the rest is just addon that user should have way to choose to install them or not

[Anonymous]

Server have less comps build-in to it
so its make it less heavy cos
there much less regs in hive system
less files
that may makes server better in performance

i dont really get why windows 7 needs all its stuff like dvd maker
media center and on ..

OS should be neat clean all the rest is just addon that user should have way to choose to install them or not

[aln688]

Thanks for the reply. From what I’ve read, I think Windows Server 2008 made more of a case than Server 2008 R2. The Server 2008 was much better than Vista in terms of performance, but Server 2008 R2 really isn’t much of an improvement over Windows 7, as Windows 7 is already quite fast as-is.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply. From what I’ve read, I think Windows Server 2008 made more of a case than Server 2008 R2. The Server 2008 was much better than Vista in terms of performance, but Server 2008 R2 really isn’t much of an improvement over Windows 7, as Windows 7 is already quite fast as-is.

[JingoFresh]

Yep, right again.

Server 2008 R1 had a improved kernel and enhancements over Vista, similar to the case with 2003 and XP. R2 and 7 were develop in parallel from the same codebase, and have the same kernel.

The reasons to use R2 are not because of performance, but because you prefer the philosophy or like Hyper-V or such.

[Anonymous]

Yep, right again.

Server 2008 R1 had a improved kernel and enhancements over Vista, similar to the case with 2003 and XP. R2 and 7 were develop in parallel from the same codebase, and have the same kernel.

The reasons to use R2 are not because of performance, but because you prefer the philosophy or like Hyper-V or such.

[Indrek]

@aln688 wrote:

I’m currently trying out Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 (WS), and after booting with just video and network drivers installed, it consumes 1.30 GB of RAM. I don’t know how much RAM Windows 7 (W7) consumes, but I’m assuming it’s not quite as bad.

Well, Windows 7 has SuperFetch so it’ll try and use as much RAM as it can, so in that sense it’s indeed not quite as bad. There’s an installer available here to port SuperFetch over to WS, but I don’t think it does anything right now except populating the cache (ie. no actual performance benefits).

[Anonymous]

@aln688 wrote:

I’m currently trying out Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 (WS), and after booting with just video and network drivers installed, it consumes 1.30 GB of RAM. I don’t know how much RAM Windows 7 (W7) consumes, but I’m assuming it’s not quite as bad.

Well, Windows 7 has SuperFetch so it’ll try and use as much RAM as it can, so in that sense it’s indeed not quite as bad. There’s an installer available here to port SuperFetch over to WS, but I don’t think it does anything right now except populating the cache (ie. no actual performance benefits).

[aln688]

Thanks for the information. My use for an OS is mainly development and graphic design, a little gaming (HL2, Crysis, etc.) as well as the more mundane tasks such as e-mail and web-browsing. I think you’re right, there is a certain element of hype regarding 64-bit software.

For laughs I tried Windows Server 2003 R2 and while it was lightening fast, I couldn’t get the latest ATI Catalyst drivers to install, it wouldn’t detect the card. I had to go back to a driver version from last year before it would install, the latest 10.2 wouldn’t.

I did read about the SuperFetch not working on Server 2008 R2, I’m not sure I’d miss it even if I stuck with Server 2008 R2. For myself, it’s choice between Server 2003 R2 or Windows 7; XP Pro x64 would be a choice but MS for some strange reason decided not to let Office 2010 install on it, not even the 32-bit version!

Thanks all.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the information. My use for an OS is mainly development and graphic design, a little gaming (HL2, Crysis, etc.) as well as the more mundane tasks such as e-mail and web-browsing. I think you’re right, there is a certain element of hype regarding 64-bit software.

For laughs I tried Windows Server 2003 R2 and while it was lightening fast, I couldn’t get the latest ATI Catalyst drivers to install, it wouldn’t detect the card. I had to go back to a driver version from last year before it would install, the latest 10.2 wouldn’t.

I did read about the SuperFetch not working on Server 2008 R2, I’m not sure I’d miss it even if I stuck with Server 2008 R2. For myself, it’s choice between Server 2003 R2 or Windows 7; XP Pro x64 would be a choice but MS for some strange reason decided not to let Office 2010 install on it, not even the 32-bit version!

Thanks all.

[Blameless]

Convenience and minimalism for me.

Server 2008 R2 has less fluff I have to remove, doesn’t force me to create any extra user accounts I don’t need (I know I can change this), and requires me to disable less stuff to get my system the way I want it.

Superfetch, indeed prefetching in generall is overrated on a well maintained system. If anything I notice a small improvement in responsiveness with it disabled.

[Anonymous]

Convenience and minimalism for me.

Server 2008 R2 has less fluff I have to remove, doesn’t force me to create any extra user accounts I don’t need (I know I can change this), and requires me to disable less stuff to get my system the way I want it.

Superfetch, indeed prefetching in generall is overrated on a well maintained system. If anything I notice a small improvement in responsiveness with it disabled.

[JingoFresh]

@Indrek wrote:

Well, Windows 7 has SuperFetch so it’ll try and use as much RAM as it can, so in that sense it’s indeed not quite as bad. There’s an installer available here to port SuperFetch over to WS, but I don’t think it does anything right now except populating the cache (ie. no actual performance benefits).

Even on W7, superfetch is very easily disabled, and then R2 and 7 use almost identical amounts of ram.

And you’re right, the superfecth addin for R2 won’t do anything and it never will. Support for prefetching must be enabled in the kernel, and it is explicitly disabled in the R2 kernel.

The best thing to try would be to try replacing the r2 kernel with the 7 kernel, and since theya re based on the same codebase this should work. In that case though, why not just use 7 and tone it down?

@aln688 wrote:

For myself, it’s choice between Server 2003 R2 or Windows 7; XP Pro x64 would be a choice but MS for some strange reason decided not to let Office 2010 install on it, not even the 32-bit version!

Thanks all.

You mean 2008 R2 right?

If it’s any guide, my habbits are similar to yours, with the addition of some development and virtual machines.

I tend to do all my heavy stuff under linux anyway. The reason I like R2 at the moment is the group policy, firewall, minimalism and hyper-v. Most of that stuff ahs an equivilant in 7, so there in’t too much of a difference in running them.

@Blameless wrote:

Server 2008 R2 has less fluff I have to remove, doesn’t force me to create any extra user accounts I don’t need (I know I can change this), and requires me to disable less stuff to get my system the way I want it.

Superfetch, indeed prefetching in generall is overrated on a well maintained system. If anything I notice a small improvement in responsiveness with it disabled.

Indeed, Supefetch is useful for most people who use computers the same way everyday. Open certain programs repeatedly and such. For anyone advanced enough to be interesting in running R2 as a worktation it isnt going to be missed.

Also, just a note, but you really shoudlnt be using the Administrator account as your everyday account.

[Anonymous]

@Indrek wrote:

Well, Windows 7 has SuperFetch so it’ll try and use as much RAM as it can, so in that sense it’s indeed not quite as bad. There’s an installer available here to port SuperFetch over to WS, but I don’t think it does anything right now except populating the cache (ie. no actual performance benefits).

Even on W7, superfetch is very easily disabled, and then R2 and 7 use almost identical amounts of ram.

And you’re right, the superfecth addin for R2 won’t do anything and it never will. Support for prefetching must be enabled in the kernel, and it is explicitly disabled in the R2 kernel.

The best thing to try would be to try replacing the r2 kernel with the 7 kernel, and since theya re based on the same codebase this should work. In that case though, why not just use 7 and tone it down?

@aln688 wrote:

For myself, it’s choice between Server 2003 R2 or Windows 7; XP Pro x64 would be a choice but MS for some strange reason decided not to let Office 2010 install on it, not even the 32-bit version!

Thanks all.

You mean 2008 R2 right?

If it’s any guide, my habbits are similar to yours, with the addition of some development and virtual machines.

I tend to do all my heavy stuff under linux anyway. The reason I like R2 at the moment is the group policy, firewall, minimalism and hyper-v. Most of that stuff ahs an equivilant in 7, so there in’t too much of a difference in running them.

@Blameless wrote:

Server 2008 R2 has less fluff I have to remove, doesn’t force me to create any extra user accounts I don’t need (I know I can change this), and requires me to disable less stuff to get my system the way I want it.

Superfetch, indeed prefetching in generall is overrated on a well maintained system. If anything I notice a small improvement in responsiveness with it disabled.

Indeed, Supefetch is useful for most people who use computers the same way everyday. Open certain programs repeatedly and such. For anyone advanced enough to be interesting in running R2 as a worktation it isnt going to be missed.

Also, just a note, but you really shoudlnt be using the Administrator account as your everyday account.

[aln688]

@JingoFresh wrote:

Even on W7, superfetch is very easily disabled, and then R2 and 7 use almost identical amounts of ram.

And you’re right, the superfecth addin for R2 won’t do anything and it never will. Support for prefetching must be enabled in the kernel, and it is explicitly disabled in the R2 kernel.

The best thing to try would be to try replacing the r2 kernel with the 7 kernel, and since theya re based on the same codebase this should work. In that case though, why not just use 7 and tone it down?

Good point, but it’s hardly worth it. I’ve “customized” Server 2008 R2 to the point I sit here wondering why on earth don’t I use Windows 7?! In my mind, there’s more tweaks to make to Server 2008 R2 to get it to act similar to Windows 7, than there are tweaks to make to Windows 7 to make it act like Server 2008 R2!

@JingoFresh wrote:

You mean 2008 R2 right?

If it’s any guide, my habbits are similar to yours, with the addition of some development and virtual machines.

I tend to do all my heavy stuff under linux anyway. The reason I like R2 at the moment is the group policy, firewall, minimalism and hyper-v. Most of that stuff ahs an equivilant in 7, so there in’t too much of a difference in running them.

Actually, I really do mean Server 2003 R2. 🙂 I’ll admit, looking at that Server 2003 R2, blocky, digitized splash screen as it loads, looks like something from the last century, but once it’s loaded, drivers installed (Chipset, Video and USB Wireless), the speed is incredible, and Office 2010 32-bit will install on it.

For what I do, all I need is Visual Studio 2008, Oracle 11g, some graphics tools and e-mail, Server 2003 R2, Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 all fit the bill, but out of the three, Server 2003 R2 is the fastest, although maybe not optimized for my custom-built PC (Core i7-based).

[Anonymous]

@JingoFresh wrote:

Even on W7, superfetch is very easily disabled, and then R2 and 7 use almost identical amounts of ram.

And you’re right, the superfecth addin for R2 won’t do anything and it never will. Support for prefetching must be enabled in the kernel, and it is explicitly disabled in the R2 kernel.

The best thing to try would be to try replacing the r2 kernel with the 7 kernel, and since theya re based on the same codebase this should work. In that case though, why not just use 7 and tone it down?

Good point, but it’s hardly worth it. I’ve “customized” Server 2008 R2 to the point I sit here wondering why on earth don’t I use Windows 7?! In my mind, there’s more tweaks to make to Server 2008 R2 to get it to act similar to Windows 7, than there are tweaks to make to Windows 7 to make it act like Server 2008 R2!

@JingoFresh wrote:

You mean 2008 R2 right?

If it’s any guide, my habbits are similar to yours, with the addition of some development and virtual machines.

I tend to do all my heavy stuff under linux anyway. The reason I like R2 at the moment is the group policy, firewall, minimalism and hyper-v. Most of that stuff ahs an equivilant in 7, so there in’t too much of a difference in running them.

Actually, I really do mean Server 2003 R2. 🙂 I’ll admit, looking at that Server 2003 R2, blocky, digitized splash screen as it loads, looks like something from the last century, but once it’s loaded, drivers installed (Chipset, Video and USB Wireless), the speed is incredible, and Office 2010 32-bit will install on it.

For what I do, all I need is Visual Studio 2008, Oracle 11g, some graphics tools and e-mail, Server 2003 R2, Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 all fit the bill, but out of the three, Server 2003 R2 is the fastest, although maybe not optimized for my custom-built PC (Core i7-based).

[Blameless]

@JingoFresh wrote:

Also, just a note, but you really shoudlnt be using the Administrator account as your everyday account.

I’m aware of the risks.

No one else has physical access to my systems and I have a hardware firewall. I also have backups and disk images if anything goes wrong, and I’ve never had anything go wrong in 10 years of using the Administrator account in NT based OSes that would have been prevented by using another account.

I’m much more willing to risk breaking something than having to deal with more frequent, but smaller, annoyances.

[Anonymous]

@JingoFresh wrote:

Also, just a note, but you really shoudlnt be using the Administrator account as your everyday account.

I’m aware of the risks.

No one else has physical access to my systems and I have a hardware firewall. I also have backups and disk images if anything goes wrong, and I’ve never had anything go wrong in 10 years of using the Administrator account in NT based OSes that would have been prevented by using another account.

I’m much more willing to risk breaking something than having to deal with more frequent, but smaller, annoyances.

[JingoFresh]

@aln688 wrote:

No one else has physical access to my systems and I have a hardware firewall. I also have backups and disk images if anything goes wrong, and I’ve never had anything go wrong in 10 years of using the Administrator account in NT based OSes that would have been prevented by using another account.

It isn’t so much an issue of doing something wrong consciously. These days exploits can target you without you having to do anything, just through a banner ad on a site you otherwise trust.

Since you only need to be Admin to install software or configure things, why take the extra risk and run as admin all the time?

Just as you wouldn’t run as root all the time on *nix you shouldn’t runas Administrator on Windows. The tiny bit of increased convenience is not worth the increased risk.

Just saying.

[Anonymous]

@aln688 wrote:

No one else has physical access to my systems and I have a hardware firewall. I also have backups and disk images if anything goes wrong, and I’ve never had anything go wrong in 10 years of using the Administrator account in NT based OSes that would have been prevented by using another account.

It isn’t so much an issue of doing something wrong consciously. These days exploits can target you without you having to do anything, just through a banner ad on a site you otherwise trust.

Since you only need to be Admin to install software or configure things, why take the extra risk and run as admin all the time?

Just as you wouldn’t run as root all the time on *nix you shouldn’t runas Administrator on Windows. The tiny bit of increased convenience is not worth the increased risk.

Just saying.

[aln688]

I never actually said that, however I do agree with you 100%. 🙂

[Anonymous]

I never actually said that, however I do agree with you 100%. 🙂

[Blameless]

That was me who said that.

@JingoFresh wrote:

It isn’t so much an issue of doing something wrong consciously. These days exploits can target you without you having to do anything, just through a banner ad on a site you otherwise trust.

Since you only need to be Admin to install software or configure things, why take the extra risk and run as admin all the time?

I’m a tinkerer and I install and configure software and hardware virtually on a daily basis.

I do 95% of my web browsing inside a virtual machine anyway.

@JingoFresh wrote:

Just as you wouldn’t run as root all the time on *nix you shouldn’t runas Administrator on Windows. The tiny bit of increased convenience is not worth the increased risk.

Just saying.

For me the extra convenience is worth the increased risk. I have no tolerance for nagging prompts, or my system telling me what I can and cannot break.

I grew up with DOS and single user Windows environments where, in general, the OS did what was told, even if what you told it to do would render it completely inoperable, and I honestly preferred things that way.

Not that I have anything against those who do prefer the extra security, but I simply don’t need or want it.

[Anonymous]

That was me who said that.

@JingoFresh wrote:

It isn’t so much an issue of doing something wrong consciously. These days exploits can target you without you having to do anything, just through a banner ad on a site you otherwise trust.

Since you only need to be Admin to install software or configure things, why take the extra risk and run as admin all the time?

I’m a tinkerer and I install and configure software and hardware virtually on a daily basis.

I do 95% of my web browsing inside a virtual machine anyway.

@JingoFresh wrote:

Just as you wouldn’t run as root all the time on *nix you shouldn’t runas Administrator on Windows. The tiny bit of increased convenience is not worth the increased risk.

Just saying.

For me the extra convenience is worth the increased risk. I have no tolerance for nagging prompts, or my system telling me what I can and cannot break.

I grew up with DOS and single user Windows environments where, in general, the OS did what was told, even if what you told it to do would render it completely inoperable, and I honestly preferred things that way.

Not that I have anything against those who do prefer the extra security, but I simply don’t need or want it.

[SuperMiguel]

Im an Electric engineer student.. I also few engineer aplications that seem to run in 2008 R2 as well as in 7… I been running vmware workstation for a while… Wondering if i should install 2008 R2.. system has 16gb of ram and quad cpu..

I need apps like Multisim, matlab, avrstudio, etc

[Anonymous]

Im an Electric engineer student.. I also few engineer aplications that seem to run in 2008 R2 as well as in 7… I been running vmware workstation for a while… Wondering if i should install 2008 R2.. system has 16gb of ram and quad cpu..

I need apps like Multisim, matlab, avrstudio, etc

[yumeyao]

2 main reasons:

1. I can get free Srv 2008 R2 Std from dreamspark. Although I can get ‘free’ Windows 7 Enterprise from my college, it requires extending the activation within 180 days(meanwhile if I use it outside my college for more than 180 days so I can’t extending the activation by connecting to the KMS server, the activation goes invalid).

2. I hate the ‘cleverness’ of Windows 7. If you look up to eventlog, or task scheduler, you’ll see tons of automatical behaviors there. They may be helpful to people who are new to computer, but are kinds annoying to us advanced users. Also there are other ‘cleverness’ that takes action when you’re doing several specific events, which are also annoying to me. I can’t figure out how to turn all of them off.

[Anonymous]

2 main reasons:

1. I can get free Srv 2008 R2 Std from dreamspark. Although I can get ‘free’ Windows 7 Enterprise from my college, it requires extending the activation within 180 days(meanwhile if I use it outside my college for more than 180 days so I can’t extending the activation by connecting to the KMS server, the activation goes invalid).

2. I hate the ‘cleverness’ of Windows 7. If you look up to eventlog, or task scheduler, you’ll see tons of automatical behaviors there. They may be helpful to people who are new to computer, but are kinds annoying to us advanced users. Also there are other ‘cleverness’ that takes action when you’re doing several specific events, which are also annoying to me. I can’t figure out how to turn all of them off.

[lockheed]

@aln688 wrote:

XP Pro x64 would be a choice but MS for some strange reason decided not to let Office 2010 install on it, not even the 32-bit version!

Yes, it will if you run 32bit installer in XP compatibility mode. I just did that few days ago.

For me however, as a notebook user, XP 64 has another very serious issue – no hibernation with 4GB ram.

[Anonymous]

@aln688 wrote:

XP Pro x64 would be a choice but MS for some strange reason decided not to let Office 2010 install on it, not even the 32-bit version!

Yes, it will if you run 32bit installer in XP compatibility mode. I just did that few days ago.

For me however, as a notebook user, XP 64 has another very serious issue – no hibernation with 4GB ram.

[burglarbill]

@yumeyao wrote:

1. I can get free Srv 2008 R2 Std from dreamspark. Although I can get ‘free’ Windows 7 Enterprise from my college, it requires extending the activation within 180 days(meanwhile if I use it outside my college for more than 180 days so I can’t extending the activation by connecting to the KMS server, the activation goes invalid).

This is pretty much the same reason as me. A friend of mine mentioned this site to me and pointed out that I could get the OS free from Dreamspark. Maybe it’s more secure, faster, less bulky… it doesn’t really matter, the main thing is that it’s more free.

[Anonymous]

@yumeyao wrote:

1. I can get free Srv 2008 R2 Std from dreamspark. Although I can get ‘free’ Windows 7 Enterprise from my college, it requires extending the activation within 180 days(meanwhile if I use it outside my college for more than 180 days so I can’t extending the activation by connecting to the KMS server, the activation goes invalid).

This is pretty much the same reason as me. A friend of mine mentioned this site to me and pointed out that I could get the OS free from Dreamspark. Maybe it’s more secure, faster, less bulky… it doesn’t really matter, the main thing is that it’s more free.

[halladayrules]

From a student perspective you can get R2 for free through dreamspark or if you have a little bit of cash you can get Windows 7 Professional for $30 as long as you have .EDU account with an acceptable college institution.

http://www.win741.com

[Anonymous]

From a student perspective you can get R2 for free through dreamspark or if you have a little bit of cash you can get Windows 7 Professional for $30 as long as you have .EDU account with an acceptable college institution.

http://www.win741.com

[halladayrules]

I just wanted to post this as a comparison between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Dad’s machine:

HP A6230N
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ @ 2.8 GHz
3GB PC2-5300 RAM
320GB HDD
Nvidia GeForce 6150SE

Programs Installed:

uTorrent
Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX
Adobe Flash Player 10 Plugin
Adobe Reader 9.3
Adobe Shockwave Player 11
Apple Software Update
AVG 8.5
Cyberlink PowerDVD 9
Gold Miner Vegas
Google Chrome
Java 6 Update 17
LimeWire PRO 5.4.6
Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware
Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile
Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008
Monopoly City
Mozilla Firefox 3.6.8
MSXML 4.0 SP2
Nicktoons HoverZone
QuickTime
Spin & Win
Virtual City
Vista Volume Indicator
Visual C++ 8.0 Runtime Setup Package (x64)
Way to Go! Bowling
Shark007 Vista Codecs
WinRAR
Yahoo Messenger

My machine:

Gateway GM5632E
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz
4GB PC2-6400 RAM
500GB HDD
Nvidia GeForce 9400GT

Programs Installed:

uTorrent
Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX
Adobe Flash Player 10 Plugin
Adobe Reader 9.3
Auslogics BoostSpeed
Auslogics Disk Defrag
DivX Codec
DivX Player
DivX Plus Web Player
DynDNS Updater
eBoostr 4
ESET NOD32 Antivirus
Google Chrome
Input Director v1.2.2
Java 6 Update 21
Limewire PRO 4.18.8
Magic ISO Maker v5.4
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable
Orca
PE Explorer 1.99 R6
Universal Extractor 1.6.1
Shark007’s Vista Codec Package
Shark007’s Win7Codecs
WinRAR
Yahoo Messenger

BLUE = Program exists on both mine and my dad’s computer
RED = Program only exists on my computer
GREEN = Program only exists on my dad’s computer

Both computers have ALL startup items disabled in MSCONFIG and all services enabled. I rebooted the computers so it would represent how much memory is being consumed when OS when its been refreshed (so its a fair comparison)

_______________________________________________________________________________

The Results:

My dad’s computer running Windows 7 Ultimate. As you can see his machine is using 64 processes and consuming over a 1GB of memory on startup (1.04GB)

My computer running Windows Server 2008 R2. It uses only 38 processes and 636MB of RAM, 39% less RAM than its desktop counterpart Windows 7.

This is a completely unbiased review of both operating systems that exemplifies their resource usage in their natural state. I have not modified the operating systems in any way other than disabling the startup items in MSCONFIG.

[Anonymous]

I just wanted to post this as a comparison between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Dad’s machine:

HP A6230N
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ @ 2.8 GHz
3GB PC2-5300 RAM
320GB HDD
Nvidia GeForce 6150SE

Programs Installed:

uTorrent
Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX
Adobe Flash Player 10 Plugin
Adobe Reader 9.3
Adobe Shockwave Player 11
Apple Software Update
AVG 8.5
Cyberlink PowerDVD 9
Gold Miner Vegas
Google Chrome
Java 6 Update 17
LimeWire PRO 5.4.6
Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware
Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile
Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008
Monopoly City
Mozilla Firefox 3.6.8
MSXML 4.0 SP2
Nicktoons HoverZone
QuickTime
Spin & Win
Virtual City
Vista Volume Indicator
Visual C++ 8.0 Runtime Setup Package (x64)
Way to Go! Bowling
Shark007 Vista Codecs
WinRAR
Yahoo Messenger

My machine:

Gateway GM5632E
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz
4GB PC2-6400 RAM
500GB HDD
Nvidia GeForce 9400GT

Programs Installed:

uTorrent
Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX
Adobe Flash Player 10 Plugin
Adobe Reader 9.3
Auslogics BoostSpeed
Auslogics Disk Defrag
DivX Codec
DivX Player
DivX Plus Web Player
DynDNS Updater
eBoostr 4
ESET NOD32 Antivirus
Google Chrome
Input Director v1.2.2
Java 6 Update 21
Limewire PRO 4.18.8
Magic ISO Maker v5.4
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable
Orca
PE Explorer 1.99 R6
Universal Extractor 1.6.1
Shark007’s Vista Codec Package
Shark007’s Win7Codecs
WinRAR
Yahoo Messenger

BLUE = Program exists on both mine and my dad’s computer
RED = Program only exists on my computer
GREEN = Program only exists on my dad’s computer

Both computers have ALL startup items disabled in MSCONFIG and all services enabled. I rebooted the computers so it would represent how much memory is being consumed when OS when its been refreshed (so its a fair comparison)

_______________________________________________________________________________

The Results:

My dad’s computer running Windows 7 Ultimate. As you can see his machine is using 64 processes and consuming over a 1GB of memory on startup (1.04GB)

My computer running Windows Server 2008 R2. It uses only 38 processes and 636MB of RAM, 39% less RAM than its desktop counterpart Windows 7.

This is a completely unbiased review of both operating systems that exemplifies their resource usage in their natural state. I have not modified the operating systems in any way other than disabling the startup items in MSCONFIG.

[aln688]

How can you compare Windows 7 to Windows Server 2008 R2 with a different set of installed programs? If your Dad’s machine is using 64 processes, I would expect his PC to use more RAM, with your Server using 38 processes (less) – this to me is normal but doesn’t prove that Windows Server 2008 R2 is more minimalistic in its resource usage.

[Anonymous]

How can you compare Windows 7 to Windows Server 2008 R2 with a different set of installed programs? If your Dad’s machine is using 64 processes, I would expect his PC to use more RAM, with your Server using 38 processes (less) – this to me is normal but doesn’t prove that Windows Server 2008 R2 is more minimalistic in its resource usage.

[halladayrules]

@aln688 wrote:

How can you compare Windows 7 to Windows Server 2008 R2 with a different set of installed programs? If your Dad’s machine is using 64 processes, I would expect his PC to use more RAM, with your Server using 38 processes (less) – this to me is normal but doesn’t prove that Windows Server 2008 R2 is more minimalistic in its resource usage.

You make a valid point. I thought it was a bit unusual that my computer was using 26 more processes than mine on startup despite me disabling everything on startup. I went in to each individual programs user interface and went under the general tab or whatever and unchecked them from starting up. For some reason they were taking priority over MSCONFIG. Now that I rebooted the processes went down to 42. I counted 65 services running on his machine, compared to only 54 on my machine. Windows 7 has the extra services running with Media Center, HomeGroup, Superfetch this probably explains the reduced footprint.

[Anonymous]

@aln688 wrote:

How can you compare Windows 7 to Windows Server 2008 R2 with a different set of installed programs? If your Dad’s machine is using 64 processes, I would expect his PC to use more RAM, with your Server using 38 processes (less) – this to me is normal but doesn’t prove that Windows Server 2008 R2 is more minimalistic in its resource usage.

You make a valid point. I thought it was a bit unusual that my computer was using 26 more processes than mine on startup despite me disabling everything on startup. I went in to each individual programs user interface and went under the general tab or whatever and unchecked them from starting up. For some reason they were taking priority over MSCONFIG. Now that I rebooted the processes went down to 42. I counted 65 services running on his machine, compared to only 54 on my machine. Windows 7 has the extra services running with Media Center, HomeGroup, Superfetch this probably explains the reduced footprint.

[Indrek]

Msconfig doesn’t catch all startup items. Try Sysinternals Autoruns instead:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Also, the way I see it, your dad’s Win7 machine is making better use of the available RAM, leaving only 1/3 of it idle, compared to 3/4 on your machine.

[Anonymous]

Msconfig doesn’t catch all startup items. Try Sysinternals Autoruns instead:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Also, the way I see it, your dad’s Win7 machine is making better use of the available RAM, leaving only 1/3 of it idle, compared to 3/4 on your machine.

[pondo]

TIP: Optimize system for background processes instead of programs. I’ve got better performance using this method. Windows server systems are optimized for this, as most servers are running those services to manage the server and cutting those has caused lags for other programs.

Also people using server 2008 can try using many system management tools.

I also have a windows 7 professional and a windows 7 home premium systems and I have noticed that even on windows 7 the performance drains were pretty much the same as windows vista. I still have a windows vista x64 home premium based HP notebook and it has been stable. You just have to know how to use it.

The differences in both OSes on the backend have been minimal after extensive testing. Most of the changes were in the GUI and some programs like windows media player got an interface overhaul that was not very positively received due to removal of the ID3 tag editors, the miniplayer, and the relocation of the EQ’s menu. However on the plus side you got aero peek, aero shake, and better UAC controls, as well as improved device support. The taskbar has ben both praised and criticized.

I pretty much have to say that windows 7 is what windows vista should have been.

It has some great enhancements, especially in the Sold State Disk support section, and the file management stack. Just a little taste of the WinFS feature windows longhorn was going to have that Microsoft was excited about! I am hopeful we shall get the full WinFS experience in the upcoming windows 8 release!

[Anonymous]

TIP: Optimize system for background processes instead of programs. I’ve got better performance using this method. Windows server systems are optimized for this, as most servers are running those services to manage the server and cutting those has caused lags for other programs.

Also people using server 2008 can try using many system management tools.

I also have a windows 7 professional and a windows 7 home premium systems and I have noticed that even on windows 7 the performance drains were pretty much the same as windows vista. I still have a windows vista x64 home premium based HP notebook and it has been stable. You just have to know how to use it.

The differences in both OSes on the backend have been minimal after extensive testing. Most of the changes were in the GUI and some programs like windows media player got an interface overhaul that was not very positively received due to removal of the ID3 tag editors, the miniplayer, and the relocation of the EQ’s menu. However on the plus side you got aero peek, aero shake, and better UAC controls, as well as improved device support. The taskbar has ben both praised and criticized.

I pretty much have to say that windows 7 is what windows vista should have been.

It has some great enhancements, especially in the Sold State Disk support section, and the file management stack. Just a little taste of the WinFS feature windows longhorn was going to have that Microsoft was excited about! I am hopeful we shall get the full WinFS experience in the upcoming windows 8 release!

[halladayrules]

@Indrek wrote:

Msconfig doesn’t catch all startup items. Try Sysinternals Autoruns instead:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Also, the way I see it, your dad’s Win7 machine is making better use of the available RAM, leaving only 1/3 of it idle, compared to 3/4 on your machine.

As evidenced by the lack of Superfetch. But my beef with Superfetch is that it relies on the hard drive as a caching medium. So on machines that are running Windows 7 with less than 4GB of RAM (for example my dad’s drive) when the free memory nears 0 and the user wants to call on application that hasn’t been written into the Superfetch database, the hard drive must page out to allow new data in memory, and thrashing occurs. This type of event is most common for gamers. I’ve noticed there are quite a few World of Warcraft forums online that recommend disabling Superfetch when playing the game. It makes sense. Think of all the maps in that game that have lots of textures, objects, etc. The game is constantly going to be using a large block of memory and if Superfetch is constantly draining your free memory to 0 disk thrashing will occur and the game might crash a result. Now under normal operations when you are just surfing the web, playing music, writing a document in Word, Superfetch is a useful service. But personally I would rather have a large chunk of physical memory available than a large chunk of cached virtual memory available. Readyboost on the other hand that comes with Windows 7 is a completely different story. It is the superfetch of flash memory. Unlike your hard drive, your flash drive has no moving parts and reading/writing data to it becomes much faster and is thus much more useful. Unfortunately for me, even if ReadyBoost was available on R2 my USB flash drive isn’t Readyboost-compatible. As a workaround I am using eboostr, which is a disk caching technology that allows me to use my flash drive as a caching device. I have allocated 1512MB of memory out of 2GB on my flash drive and it has currently filled 79% of its cache, with a random read speed of 20,586 KB/s. In a way if you think about it this is the best of both worlds on Windows Server 2008 R2. The eboostr program keeps all of my commonly used programs into memory, while the lack of Superfetch on Server allows my pool of physical memory on my machine to remain high as well. The difference with my machine is that it doesn’t rely on the hard drive for caching and disk thrashing is not a problem.

Indrek, have you ever considered the following alternative?

1. Change Superfetch so it caches boot files only (not applications)
2. Use Readyboost/eBoostr as your caching medium instead

This way you can reduce hard disk thrashing while using a higher-speed medium for caching and with Superfetch caching your boot files your Windows 7 machine will still boot up fast.

[Anonymous]

@Indrek wrote:

Msconfig doesn’t catch all startup items. Try Sysinternals Autoruns instead:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Also, the way I see it, your dad’s Win7 machine is making better use of the available RAM, leaving only 1/3 of it idle, compared to 3/4 on your machine.

As evidenced by the lack of Superfetch. But my beef with Superfetch is that it relies on the hard drive as a caching medium. So on machines that are running Windows 7 with less than 4GB of RAM (for example my dad’s drive) when the free memory nears 0 and the user wants to call on application that hasn’t been written into the Superfetch database, the hard drive must page out to allow new data in memory, and thrashing occurs. This type of event is most common for gamers. I’ve noticed there are quite a few World of Warcraft forums online that recommend disabling Superfetch when playing the game. It makes sense. Think of all the maps in that game that have lots of textures, objects, etc. The game is constantly going to be using a large block of memory and if Superfetch is constantly draining your free memory to 0 disk thrashing will occur and the game might crash a result. Now under normal operations when you are just surfing the web, playing music, writing a document in Word, Superfetch is a useful service. But personally I would rather have a large chunk of physical memory available than a large chunk of cached virtual memory available. Readyboost on the other hand that comes with Windows 7 is a completely different story. It is the superfetch of flash memory. Unlike your hard drive, your flash drive has no moving parts and reading/writing data to it becomes much faster and is thus much more useful. Unfortunately for me, even if ReadyBoost was available on R2 my USB flash drive isn’t Readyboost-compatible. As a workaround I am using eboostr, which is a disk caching technology that allows me to use my flash drive as a caching device. I have allocated 1512MB of memory out of 2GB on my flash drive and it has currently filled 79% of its cache, with a random read speed of 20,586 KB/s. In a way if you think about it this is the best of both worlds on Windows Server 2008 R2. The eboostr program keeps all of my commonly used programs into memory, while the lack of Superfetch on Server allows my pool of physical memory on my machine to remain high as well. The difference with my machine is that it doesn’t rely on the hard drive for caching and disk thrashing is not a problem.

Indrek, have you ever considered the following alternative?

1. Change Superfetch so it caches boot files only (not applications)
2. Use Readyboost/eBoostr as your caching medium instead

This way you can reduce hard disk thrashing while using a higher-speed medium for caching and with Superfetch caching your boot files your Windows 7 machine will still boot up fast.

[pondo]

@ Halliday, Thanks much for the valuable Superfeatch insights. I may try that eboostr utility out!

[Anonymous]

@ Halliday, Thanks much for the valuable Superfeatch insights. I may try that eboostr utility out!

[halladayrules]

@pondo wrote:

@ Halliday, Thanks much for the valuable Superfeatch insights. I may try that eboostr utility out!

Thanks. The concept of Superfetch for the most part is beneficial. I think if you have ample memory then disk thrashing isn’t really a problem, for example on those machines with 4GB or more. It’s becoming more common theme to see OEM machines in stores that have 6GB of memory or more. I’ve left my computer idle for 36 hours straight, logged into Windows, and then clicked the programs I frequently use and they load just as fast as if i was running windows 7 with superfetch. Eboostr is more like Readyboost if anything. If you check the website you can see that it was built to run on XP as a readyboost replacement. Trust me, it will shave your boot time 10 seconds atleast and applications will respond faster than before. For Windows Server 2008 R2 workstations I personally highly recommend eBoostr.

[Anonymous]

@pondo wrote:

@ Halliday, Thanks much for the valuable Superfeatch insights. I may try that eboostr utility out!

Thanks. The concept of Superfetch for the most part is beneficial. I think if you have ample memory then disk thrashing isn’t really a problem, for example on those machines with 4GB or more. It’s becoming more common theme to see OEM machines in stores that have 6GB of memory or more. I’ve left my computer idle for 36 hours straight, logged into Windows, and then clicked the programs I frequently use and they load just as fast as if i was running windows 7 with superfetch. Eboostr is more like Readyboost if anything. If you check the website you can see that it was built to run on XP as a readyboost replacement. Trust me, it will shave your boot time 10 seconds atleast and applications will respond faster than before. For Windows Server 2008 R2 workstations I personally highly recommend eBoostr.

[pondo]

Good! I tried 12 long hours and it equaled one sleepless night over getting SuperFetch to work and I gave up. 👿

[Anonymous]

Good! I tried 12 long hours and it equaled one sleepless night over getting SuperFetch to work and I gave up. 👿

[Indrek]

@halladayrules wrote:

As evidenced by the lack of Superfetch. But my beef with Superfetch is that it relies on the hard drive as a caching medium. So on machines that are running Windows 7 with less than 4GB of RAM (for example my dad’s drive) when the free memory nears 0 and the user wants to call on application that hasn’t been written into the Superfetch database, the hard drive must page out to allow new data in memory, and thrashing occurs.

I’m no expert, but if the user wants to call a new app and there’s no free RAM, Windows is supposed to use the RAM that’s on standby instead. For instance, my laptop right now has 188 MB of RAM free and 1773 MB on standby. Thus the total amount of RAM immediately available for new programs is 1961 MB. Only when that is exhausted does paging occur.

On my machine I haven’t noticed any significant hard drive thrashing during normal use. I guess I could try running Visual Studio 2010, Photoshop CS5, a few virtual machines and whatnot at the same time, but that’s a rather contrived situation, in my case at least.

Having gone from WS2008 R2 to Win7 on the same machine (with a practically identical set of installed programs), I think I prefer Win7 in terms of application startup performance – more of the things I use daily start up faster. At least that’s how I perceive it, I haven’t done any actual measurements. And of course, YMMV.

@halladayrules wrote:

I’ve noticed there are quite a few World of Warcraft forums online that recommend disabling Superfetch when playing the game. It makes sense. Think of all the maps in that game that have lots of textures, objects, etc. The game is constantly going to be using a large block of memory and if Superfetch is constantly draining your free memory to 0 disk thrashing will occur and the game might crash a result.

Textures and such are kept in video RAM, though, and thus don’t clash with Superfetch. Unless of course you have an integrated video card, but in that case you’re unlikely to be playing modern games with high (V)RAM requirements anyway.

And again, RAM in standby will (or at least should) be released when an application requires more RAM and there’s none free. In the situation you described above, with WoW, as long as the game’s RAM usage remains relatively constant, there’s nothing wrong with Superfetch populating the rest of the RAM rather than letting it sit idle. If WoW suddenly requires more RAM, then some of Superfetch’s cache is cleared and made available to the game. Now if your game required more RAM than you have available (free + standby), then you’d want to look at closing some programs or even buying more RAM (or not playing WoW :P), so as not to force the system to clear RAM that’s in use by other programs (which would have to be paged to hard drive first and would thus cause thrashing).

I don’t see why Superfetch on its own would cause any paging – all data in its cache came straight from the hard drive, so there’s no need to write it back to the drive, thus the RAM used by the cache can simply be cleared and allocated to another process immediately.

[Anonymous]

@halladayrules wrote:

As evidenced by the lack of Superfetch. But my beef with Superfetch is that it relies on the hard drive as a caching medium. So on machines that are running Windows 7 with less than 4GB of RAM (for example my dad’s drive) when the free memory nears 0 and the user wants to call on application that hasn’t been written into the Superfetch database, the hard drive must page out to allow new data in memory, and thrashing occurs.

I’m no expert, but if the user wants to call a new app and there’s no free RAM, Windows is supposed to use the RAM that’s on standby instead. For instance, my laptop right now has 188 MB of RAM free and 1773 MB on standby. Thus the total amount of RAM immediately available for new programs is 1961 MB. Only when that is exhausted does paging occur.

On my machine I haven’t noticed any significant hard drive thrashing during normal use. I guess I could try running Visual Studio 2010, Photoshop CS5, a few virtual machines and whatnot at the same time, but that’s a rather contrived situation, in my case at least.

Having gone from WS2008 R2 to Win7 on the same machine (with a practically identical set of installed programs), I think I prefer Win7 in terms of application startup performance – more of the things I use daily start up faster. At least that’s how I perceive it, I haven’t done any actual measurements. And of course, YMMV.

@halladayrules wrote:

I’ve noticed there are quite a few World of Warcraft forums online that recommend disabling Superfetch when playing the game. It makes sense. Think of all the maps in that game that have lots of textures, objects, etc. The game is constantly going to be using a large block of memory and if Superfetch is constantly draining your free memory to 0 disk thrashing will occur and the game might crash a result.

Textures and such are kept in video RAM, though, and thus don’t clash with Superfetch. Unless of course you have an integrated video card, but in that case you’re unlikely to be playing modern games with high (V)RAM requirements anyway.

And again, RAM in standby will (or at least should) be released when an application requires more RAM and there’s none free. In the situation you described above, with WoW, as long as the game’s RAM usage remains relatively constant, there’s nothing wrong with Superfetch populating the rest of the RAM rather than letting it sit idle. If WoW suddenly requires more RAM, then some of Superfetch’s cache is cleared and made available to the game. Now if your game required more RAM than you have available (free + standby), then you’d want to look at closing some programs or even buying more RAM (or not playing WoW :P), so as not to force the system to clear RAM that’s in use by other programs (which would have to be paged to hard drive first and would thus cause thrashing).

I don’t see why Superfetch on its own would cause any paging – all data in its cache came straight from the hard drive, so there’s no need to write it back to the drive, thus the RAM used by the cache can simply be cleared and allocated to another process immediately.

[halladayrules]

Indrek, not to mention the Windows page scheduler prioritizes which programs should and shouldn’t be paged out. So for programs and you use on a daily basis will always have a chunk of standby memory. This is nice feature most of the times.

As far as the gaming part of my discussion, it is true that if you have a video card with ample vRAM then you don’t have to depend on the system memory as much and thus will see a significant FPS gain, but as far as superfetch is concerned it can become a nightmare when you reboot your system. The thing I don’t like about Superfetch is that is becomes a disk caching monster, you can’t exclude a particular application from a list. My brother for example is a big MMPORG guy (Dark Age of Camelot, WoW, Aion, Age of Conan, Runescape) u name it he plays it. Now think of all the small chunks of data Superfetch has preloaded into memory on the hard drive. Sure the chunks are small but when you add the contents of the entire game it fills your hard drive. The good thing is that when you need to reload the game at a later time it is very fast and responsive. But when you need to restart the computer, disk activity goes nuts. I’m being completely truthful here and I take you trust my word, I kid you not, my brother has an Core i7 920, 9GB of DDR3 (1333MHz), two GTX 295s, and 2TB of HDD space and his Windows 7 machine takes 59 seconds to show the desktop. An 8 thread machine with 9GB of DDR3 on Windows 7 takes 59 seconds? I suggested that he change Superfetch to cache boot file only and use eBoostr to cache programs and exclude all his MMPORG games from the list. His result? 27 seconds.

[Anonymous]

Indrek, not to mention the Windows page scheduler prioritizes which programs should and shouldn’t be paged out. So for programs and you use on a daily basis will always have a chunk of standby memory. This is nice feature most of the times.

As far as the gaming part of my discussion, it is true that if you have a video card with ample vRAM then you don’t have to depend on the system memory as much and thus will see a significant FPS gain, but as far as superfetch is concerned it can become a nightmare when you reboot your system. The thing I don’t like about Superfetch is that is becomes a disk caching monster, you can’t exclude a particular application from a list. My brother for example is a big MMPORG guy (Dark Age of Camelot, WoW, Aion, Age of Conan, Runescape) u name it he plays it. Now think of all the small chunks of data Superfetch has preloaded into memory on the hard drive. Sure the chunks are small but when you add the contents of the entire game it fills your hard drive. The good thing is that when you need to reload the game at a later time it is very fast and responsive. But when you need to restart the computer, disk activity goes nuts. I’m being completely truthful here and I take you trust my word, I kid you not, my brother has an Core i7 920, 9GB of DDR3 (1333MHz), two GTX 295s, and 2TB of HDD space and his Windows 7 machine takes 59 seconds to show the desktop. An 8 thread machine with 9GB of DDR3 on Windows 7 takes 59 seconds? I suggested that he change Superfetch to cache boot file only and use eBoostr to cache programs and exclude all his MMPORG games from the list. His result? 27 seconds.

[pondo]

Can you see how much disk cache he was using? Do you know? What about Page Fault Delta or I/O delta?

[Anonymous]

Can you see how much disk cache he was using? Do you know? What about Page Fault Delta or I/O delta?

[Indrek]

@halladayrules wrote:

Now think of all the small chunks of data Superfetch has preloaded into memory on the hard drive. Sure the chunks are small but when you add the contents of the entire game it fills your hard drive.

Wait, what? Superfetch caches data from hard drive to RAM, not the other way around.

[Anonymous]

@halladayrules wrote:

Now think of all the small chunks of data Superfetch has preloaded into memory on the hard drive. Sure the chunks are small but when you add the contents of the entire game it fills your hard drive.

Wait, what? Superfetch caches data from hard drive to RAM, not the other way around.

[halladayrules]

@Indrek wrote:

@halladayrules wrote:

Now think of all the small chunks of data Superfetch has preloaded into memory on the hard drive. Sure the chunks are small but when you add the contents of the entire game it fills your hard drive.

Wait, what? Superfetch caches data from hard drive to RAM, not the other way around.

Sorry if I confused you there. Let me rephrase this. When you launch an application into memory, Superfetch takes pages of memory from that application and puts it into cache on the hard drive. The next time you reboot Windows, the Superfetch service works by taking the cached data on the hard drive and putting it actively into memory for faster read access. HDD to RAM. Now think of what happens when you reboot your computer, all that cached memory that superfetch preloaded from HDD to RAM is lost and starts all over again. The problem with Superfetch from my personal experience is that can become a caching monster, caching memory from applications both big and small. So when you reboot your computer and Superfetch goes to work beginning to repopulate the data into main memory, your hard drive goes nuts and as a result startup time is affected. Well to be more accurate I should say the time it takes for your computer to be in a “ready state” is increased.

Try this out Indrek and post your results:

Download the BootTimer.exe utility and run them under these conditions below:

Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic (Delayed Start):
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic:

On my laptop with Windows 7 my boot time went from 35 seconds to 31 seconds according to the measurements by the BootTimer.exe utility.

Download Boot Timer utillity here: http://download.cnet.com/PC-Boot-Timer/3000-2094_4-10545234.html?part=dl-PCBootTim&subj=dl&tag=button

[Anonymous]

@Indrek wrote:

@halladayrules wrote:

Now think of all the small chunks of data Superfetch has preloaded into memory on the hard drive. Sure the chunks are small but when you add the contents of the entire game it fills your hard drive.

Wait, what? Superfetch caches data from hard drive to RAM, not the other way around.

Sorry if I confused you there. Let me rephrase this. When you launch an application into memory, Superfetch takes pages of memory from that application and puts it into cache on the hard drive. The next time you reboot Windows, the Superfetch service works by taking the cached data on the hard drive and putting it actively into memory for faster read access. HDD to RAM. Now think of what happens when you reboot your computer, all that cached memory that superfetch preloaded from HDD to RAM is lost and starts all over again. The problem with Superfetch from my personal experience is that can become a caching monster, caching memory from applications both big and small. So when you reboot your computer and Superfetch goes to work beginning to repopulate the data into main memory, your hard drive goes nuts and as a result startup time is affected. Well to be more accurate I should say the time it takes for your computer to be in a “ready state” is increased.

Try this out Indrek and post your results:

Download the BootTimer.exe utility and run them under these conditions below:

Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic (Delayed Start):
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic:

On my laptop with Windows 7 my boot time went from 35 seconds to 31 seconds according to the measurements by the BootTimer.exe utility.

Download Boot Timer utillity here: http://download.cnet.com/PC-Boot-Timer/3000-2094_4-10545234.html?part=dl-PCBootTim&subj=dl&tag=button

[halladayrules]

@pondo wrote:

@ Halliday, Thanks much for the valuable Superfeatch insights. I may try that eboostr utility out!

Here’s my boot time with eboostr. Not bad for Server platform.

[Anonymous]

@pondo wrote:

@ Halliday, Thanks much for the valuable Superfeatch insights. I may try that eboostr utility out!

Here’s my boot time with eboostr. Not bad for Server platform.

[aln688]

LOL, Awesome Edition, nice one.

The other aspect to Superfetch is, those lucky enough to have an SSD as your boot drive (or as any drive!), Windows 7 disables Superfetch anyway because caching of files isn’t required on an SSD, so that levels the playing ground between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

[Anonymous]

LOL, Awesome Edition, nice one.

The other aspect to Superfetch is, those lucky enough to have an SSD as your boot drive (or as any drive!), Windows 7 disables Superfetch anyway because caching of files isn’t required on an SSD, so that levels the playing ground between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

[halladayrules]

@aln688 wrote:

LOL, Awesome Edition, nice one.

The other aspect to Superfetch is, those lucky enough to have an SSD as your boot drive (or as any drive!), Windows 7 disables Superfetch anyway because caching of files isn’t required on an SSD, so that levels the playing ground between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Not so Awesome Edition 🙁

For some reason when I had NOD32 running on R2 it would crash when i installed a new role or feature in server manager. I uninstalled NOD32 and rebooted computer. Not sure what happened but it refused to boot up! I was like what the heck? I think i’m fed up with R2, server 2008 never gives me any problems. I’ll miss the Windows 7 features but too many problems on my machine.

[Anonymous]

@aln688 wrote:

LOL, Awesome Edition, nice one.

The other aspect to Superfetch is, those lucky enough to have an SSD as your boot drive (or as any drive!), Windows 7 disables Superfetch anyway because caching of files isn’t required on an SSD, so that levels the playing ground between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Not so Awesome Edition 🙁

For some reason when I had NOD32 running on R2 it would crash when i installed a new role or feature in server manager. I uninstalled NOD32 and rebooted computer. Not sure what happened but it refused to boot up! I was like what the heck? I think i’m fed up with R2, server 2008 never gives me any problems. I’ll miss the Windows 7 features but too many problems on my machine.

[halladayrules]

I like this version better myself.

[Anonymous]

I like this version better myself.

[aln688]

@halladayrules wrote:

Not so Awesome Edition 🙁

For some reason when I had NOD32 running on R2 it would crash when i installed a new role or feature in server manager. I uninstalled NOD32 and rebooted computer. Not sure what happened but it refused to boot up! I was like what the heck? I think i’m fed up with R2, server 2008 never gives me any problems. I’ll miss the Windows 7 features but too many problems on my machine.

Try ESET Smart Security (http://www.eset.com/business/smart-security), the anti-virus + firewall, instead of just anti-virus; I’ve got the it loaded on R2. Can you give me some steps to try and re-produce the crash you see? I tried adding new roles and features, it worked fine.

@halladayrules wrote:

I like this version better myself.

LOL, you like the Vista server better? For me R2 runs fine, in fact one noticeable difference between this and W7, this shuts down a lot faster than W7 does. I turned off System Restore, Firewall, Themes and other services in W7, but R2 still shuts down faster.

How do you measure your boot up time? I want to try it on my system.

[Anonymous]

@halladayrules wrote:

Not so Awesome Edition 🙁

For some reason when I had NOD32 running on R2 it would crash when i installed a new role or feature in server manager. I uninstalled NOD32 and rebooted computer. Not sure what happened but it refused to boot up! I was like what the heck? I think i’m fed up with R2, server 2008 never gives me any problems. I’ll miss the Windows 7 features but too many problems on my machine.

Try ESET Smart Security (http://www.eset.com/business/smart-security), the anti-virus + firewall, instead of just anti-virus; I’ve got the it loaded on R2. Can you give me some steps to try and re-produce the crash you see? I tried adding new roles and features, it worked fine.

@halladayrules wrote:

I like this version better myself.

LOL, you like the Vista server better? For me R2 runs fine, in fact one noticeable difference between this and W7, this shuts down a lot faster than W7 does. I turned off System Restore, Firewall, Themes and other services in W7, but R2 still shuts down faster.

How do you measure your boot up time? I want to try it on my system.

[aln688]

I found the utility (using something called ‘Google’ 🙂 ), 13.712 seconds on my system.

[Anonymous]

I found the utility (using something called ‘Google’ 🙂 ), 13.712 seconds on my system.

[halladayrules]

@aln688 wrote:

Try ESET Smart Security (http://www.eset.com/business/smart-security), the anti-virus + firewall, instead of just anti-virus; I’ve got the it loaded on R2. Can you give me some steps to try and re-produce the crash you see? I tried adding new roles and features, it worked fine.

First you have to download the trial edition of ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 on http://www.eset.com. Next download Orca MSI editor tool. Next locate the MSI file you downloaded from ESET (eav_nt64_enu.msi) right-click on the file and choose Edit with Orca. Locate the Property section. Locate “producttype” and change it from eav to eavbe. Save the MSI file. Now you can install the home edition of ESET on Server 2008/R2. It installs fine, everything works good. That is until you try installing a role/feature in server manager. Try it out, see if you get the same results.

@aln688 wrote:

LOL, you like the Vista server better? For me R2 runs fine, in fact one noticeable difference between this and W7, this shuts down a lot faster than W7 does. I turned off System Restore, Firewall, Themes and other services in W7, but R2 still shuts down faster.

Let me explain why I prefer Server 2008 over R2. Keep in mind these are my own personal preferences and to other people it might not be suited for them. Firstly, as you may or may not know a 64-bit version of Windows cannot directly launch a 32-bit application. It must use an emulator known as WOW64 in order to launch it. For this reason 32-bit applications ran slower on a 64-bit operating system on my machine. Now personally I am not a gamer, so I would never utilize a 64-bit operating system. The games I play are on pogo.com lol. Plus most, if not every single application I use is 32-bit so why not use a 32-bit operating system to improve application responsiveness. Also think of the hardware, the maximum memory my motherboard supports is 8GB and with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise I can use all 8 GB if I wanted, which would be a waste because I rarely ever hit the 2GB mark.

The next thing I looked at in depth was the differences in boot time between Server 2008 and R2. At first when R2 was barebone there was quite a difference in boot time between 2008 and R2. But as I began to load down the OS with AV, programs, updates, drivers, etc, the difference in boot time became relatively small. This was before I discovered the eBoostr program of course. On average (without eboostr) R2 would boot up in about 45 seconds, compared to 53’ish for 2008. The thing is … it didn’t feel that noticeable because my BIOS is slow as molasses! I think my BIOS took a good 30 seconds to start loading windows! I turn my computer off every night so what difference does it make? I’m going to be waiting a minute to start playing on my computer regardless. A lot of these newer desktops have been built to run by Windows 7 by providing a fast POST time (usually under 3 seconds). My machine does not provide this function so in real time I feel absolutely no difference.

The next thing I looked at was the differences in features between Server 2008 and R2. The first change was improvements to Hyper-V. We can throw this one away because I use virtualization rarely, and most of the times I only use a VM to complete labs for school. I am pursuing a bachelors at ITT Tech in Information Systems (security) so when I do my labs on the Microsoft academic books they provide me (because they are XP based) i use a virtual machine to run them. However I don’t even use Hyper V because its a pathetic pile of trash that should be buried in the grave. VMWare is a much better alternative anyways. Screw Hyper V-omit. Another new feature in R2 was changes done to Active Directory, including the new recycle bin. Again this is a useless feature to me because I use Server as a workstation, not a domain controller. I don’t even use AD. Pointless to me. Another feature that comes with R2 is DirectAccess which allows remote users to transparently connect to their network while they are away from home. DirectAccess is only available when you are a domain controller, a feature I never intend to use so it is another useless feature for me. As far as the “aero snap” and “aero shake” features, I rarely used them. One thing that annoyed me for a bit (but I got used to it) was the fact that they put the show desktop into the far right corner instead of the left side. I would always click the date and time for a while until i mastered it. 😆 As far as aero shake and snap features are concerned there are 3rd party utilities that I can download on 2008 that will allow me to use them, so no love lost there.

The one program I missed the most that only ran on Server 2008 was this FTP ban program called AutoBanIPLite. It would monitor the log file of my FTP server and would allow you to enter an incorrect username/password 3 times. On the 4th attempt it would ban your IP address. Before I had this program installed I checked out my event logs and filtered the logs to show only failed attempts to access my FTP. I had only 40,000 attempts to access my FTP in 1 day! I was like what the heck… am I that popular or something? 😆

As you can see the decision to migrate back to Server 2008 became more and more easier because R2 didn’t provide a clear advantage over 2008. The OS is still as quick and snappy as R2 was and there weren’t that much changes that convinced me to go back to R2. If you think about it Server 2008 and R2 aren’t that far apart. Windows 7 is not an entirely new kernel. It is an advancement off Vista’s kernel. Windows 7 is Vista 2.0. Granted the changes they have done to OS are greater than the work they did to Vista (god help Microsoft) but in terms of the differences between server 2008 and R2 are minimal and they don’t warrant a need for change on my computer.

[Anonymous]

@aln688 wrote:

Try ESET Smart Security (http://www.eset.com/business/smart-security), the anti-virus + firewall, instead of just anti-virus; I’ve got the it loaded on R2. Can you give me some steps to try and re-produce the crash you see? I tried adding new roles and features, it worked fine.

First you have to download the trial edition of ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 on http://www.eset.com. Next download Orca MSI editor tool. Next locate the MSI file you downloaded from ESET (eav_nt64_enu.msi) right-click on the file and choose Edit with Orca. Locate the Property section. Locate “producttype” and change it from eav to eavbe. Save the MSI file. Now you can install the home edition of ESET on Server 2008/R2. It installs fine, everything works good. That is until you try installing a role/feature in server manager. Try it out, see if you get the same results.

@aln688 wrote:

LOL, you like the Vista server better? For me R2 runs fine, in fact one noticeable difference between this and W7, this shuts down a lot faster than W7 does. I turned off System Restore, Firewall, Themes and other services in W7, but R2 still shuts down faster.

Let me explain why I prefer Server 2008 over R2. Keep in mind these are my own personal preferences and to other people it might not be suited for them. Firstly, as you may or may not know a 64-bit version of Windows cannot directly launch a 32-bit application. It must use an emulator known as WOW64 in order to launch it. For this reason 32-bit applications ran slower on a 64-bit operating system on my machine. Now personally I am not a gamer, so I would never utilize a 64-bit operating system. The games I play are on pogo.com lol. Plus most, if not every single application I use is 32-bit so why not use a 32-bit operating system to improve application responsiveness. Also think of the hardware, the maximum memory my motherboard supports is 8GB and with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise I can use all 8 GB if I wanted, which would be a waste because I rarely ever hit the 2GB mark.

The next thing I looked at in depth was the differences in boot time between Server 2008 and R2. At first when R2 was barebone there was quite a difference in boot time between 2008 and R2. But as I began to load down the OS with AV, programs, updates, drivers, etc, the difference in boot time became relatively small. This was before I discovered the eBoostr program of course. On average (without eboostr) R2 would boot up in about 45 seconds, compared to 53’ish for 2008. The thing is … it didn’t feel that noticeable because my BIOS is slow as molasses! I think my BIOS took a good 30 seconds to start loading windows! I turn my computer off every night so what difference does it make? I’m going to be waiting a minute to start playing on my computer regardless. A lot of these newer desktops have been built to run by Windows 7 by providing a fast POST time (usually under 3 seconds). My machine does not provide this function so in real time I feel absolutely no difference.

The next thing I looked at was the differences in features between Server 2008 and R2. The first change was improvements to Hyper-V. We can throw this one away because I use virtualization rarely, and most of the times I only use a VM to complete labs for school. I am pursuing a bachelors at ITT Tech in Information Systems (security) so when I do my labs on the Microsoft academic books they provide me (because they are XP based) i use a virtual machine to run them. However I don’t even use Hyper V because its a pathetic pile of trash that should be buried in the grave. VMWare is a much better alternative anyways. Screw Hyper V-omit. Another new feature in R2 was changes done to Active Directory, including the new recycle bin. Again this is a useless feature to me because I use Server as a workstation, not a domain controller. I don’t even use AD. Pointless to me. Another feature that comes with R2 is DirectAccess which allows remote users to transparently connect to their network while they are away from home. DirectAccess is only available when you are a domain controller, a feature I never intend to use so it is another useless feature for me. As far as the “aero snap” and “aero shake” features, I rarely used them. One thing that annoyed me for a bit (but I got used to it) was the fact that they put the show desktop into the far right corner instead of the left side. I would always click the date and time for a while until i mastered it. 😆 As far as aero shake and snap features are concerned there are 3rd party utilities that I can download on 2008 that will allow me to use them, so no love lost there.

The one program I missed the most that only ran on Server 2008 was this FTP ban program called AutoBanIPLite. It would monitor the log file of my FTP server and would allow you to enter an incorrect username/password 3 times. On the 4th attempt it would ban your IP address. Before I had this program installed I checked out my event logs and filtered the logs to show only failed attempts to access my FTP. I had only 40,000 attempts to access my FTP in 1 day! I was like what the heck… am I that popular or something? 😆

As you can see the decision to migrate back to Server 2008 became more and more easier because R2 didn’t provide a clear advantage over 2008. The OS is still as quick and snappy as R2 was and there weren’t that much changes that convinced me to go back to R2. If you think about it Server 2008 and R2 aren’t that far apart. Windows 7 is not an entirely new kernel. It is an advancement off Vista’s kernel. Windows 7 is Vista 2.0. Granted the changes they have done to OS are greater than the work they did to Vista (god help Microsoft) but in terms of the differences between server 2008 and R2 are minimal and they don’t warrant a need for change on my computer.

[aln688]

I know what you’re meaning, modifying the MSI so it’ll meet the requirements for a Server OS. So once it’s installed, definitions updated (presumably), try installing any role or feature? I’ll try it out over the weekend, I’ll try adding the IIS Web Server role as a test.

Your reasons for keeping Windows Server 2008 are obviously very sound, and if it works for you, great. Yes, I’m aware that Windows has to run 32-bit apps through an emulation layer. From all the points you made, from 32-biit apps, to not really needing the features which represent the difference between W2K8 and W2K8 R2 are valid.

What do you mean by saying your BIOS is slow? If the BIOS ran on the .NET runtime I’d agree completely (that’s a horrible thought)! Maybe you mean the detection of devices in as the BIOS is going through its startup process? I’ve disabled a lot in my BIOS, on-board sound, on-board NIC, parallel and serial ports, as much as I can get away with.

I agree completely, Hyper-V is useless. In my BIOS I have a feature to allow sofware Hyper-V software to work better by using hardware capabilities. But really, with Sun (Oracle) VirtualBox, who on earth needs it? VirtualBox is an extremely good piece of software, even better than the VMWare bloat-ware. I would use a VM purely to try out a new piece of software that I don’t want to destroy my primary Window’s install, that is the only time I’d use VM.

Aero snap and aero shake, lol (whacky names), I’d never use those. I use Window’s in “classic” XP mode, the screen above was just to see if adding the “Desktop Experience” feature works, obviously it did. That’s amazing, I thought the same as you, the Show Desktop button, I kept reaching for it and activating the time, not to mention my mouse is usually over on the left.

So doesn’t AutoBanIPLite work on Server 2008 R2? It sounds like a great app. That’s unbelievable, 40,000 attempts in one day? Wow.

I develop software and run database servers, but also graphics work, Server 2008 R2 seems to work well. I know it’s just the same as Windows 7, but for me there’s less to turn on in Server 2008 R2, than there is to turn off in Windows 7, lol. Windows Server 2008 R2 starts up fast and shuts down fast too.

You’re right, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 are almost the same, just a slightly tweaked kernel in the latter. Just curious, what version of IIS is on Server 2008? The last time I thought about running a server was Windows 2000, then I used desktop OS’s, then discovered Server 2008 R2.

[Anonymous]

I know what you’re meaning, modifying the MSI so it’ll meet the requirements for a Server OS. So once it’s installed, definitions updated (presumably), try installing any role or feature? I’ll try it out over the weekend, I’ll try adding the IIS Web Server role as a test.

Your reasons for keeping Windows Server 2008 are obviously very sound, and if it works for you, great. Yes, I’m aware that Windows has to run 32-bit apps through an emulation layer. From all the points you made, from 32-biit apps, to not really needing the features which represent the difference between W2K8 and W2K8 R2 are valid.

What do you mean by saying your BIOS is slow? If the BIOS ran on the .NET runtime I’d agree completely (that’s a horrible thought)! Maybe you mean the detection of devices in as the BIOS is going through its startup process? I’ve disabled a lot in my BIOS, on-board sound, on-board NIC, parallel and serial ports, as much as I can get away with.

I agree completely, Hyper-V is useless. In my BIOS I have a feature to allow sofware Hyper-V software to work better by using hardware capabilities. But really, with Sun (Oracle) VirtualBox, who on earth needs it? VirtualBox is an extremely good piece of software, even better than the VMWare bloat-ware. I would use a VM purely to try out a new piece of software that I don’t want to destroy my primary Window’s install, that is the only time I’d use VM.

Aero snap and aero shake, lol (whacky names), I’d never use those. I use Window’s in “classic” XP mode, the screen above was just to see if adding the “Desktop Experience” feature works, obviously it did. That’s amazing, I thought the same as you, the Show Desktop button, I kept reaching for it and activating the time, not to mention my mouse is usually over on the left.

So doesn’t AutoBanIPLite work on Server 2008 R2? It sounds like a great app. That’s unbelievable, 40,000 attempts in one day? Wow.

I develop software and run database servers, but also graphics work, Server 2008 R2 seems to work well. I know it’s just the same as Windows 7, but for me there’s less to turn on in Server 2008 R2, than there is to turn off in Windows 7, lol. Windows Server 2008 R2 starts up fast and shuts down fast too.

You’re right, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 are almost the same, just a slightly tweaked kernel in the latter. Just curious, what version of IIS is on Server 2008? The last time I thought about running a server was Windows 2000, then I used desktop OS’s, then discovered Server 2008 R2.

[Indrek]

@halladayrules wrote:

Try this out Indrek and post your results:
Download the BootTimer.exe utility and run them under these conditions below:
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic (Delayed Start):
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic:

I might try that when I get some free time, but generally I don’t reboot my computer often enough to really care about such minuscule differences in boot time. Saving 4 seconds once a fortnight isn’t worth the effort of messing with services and whatnot.

[Anonymous]

@halladayrules wrote:

Try this out Indrek and post your results:
Download the BootTimer.exe utility and run them under these conditions below:
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic (Delayed Start):
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic:

I might try that when I get some free time, but generally I don’t reboot my computer often enough to really care about such minuscule differences in boot time. Saving 4 seconds once a fortnight isn’t worth the effort of messing with services and whatnot.

[halladayrules]

@aln688 wrote:

What do you mean by saying your BIOS is slow? If the BIOS ran on the .NET runtime I’d agree completely (that’s a horrible thought)! Maybe you mean the detection of devices in as the BIOS is going through its startup process? I’ve disabled a lot in my BIOS, on-board sound, on-board NIC, parallel and serial ports, as much as I can get away with.

Detection of devices… correct. Not to mention the Intel Matrix Storage Controller software that I can’t disable. I never thought of disabling my onboard NIC, sound, p+s ports i’ll give it a try see if it helps.

@aln688 wrote:

I agree completely, Hyper-V is useless. In my BIOS I have a feature to allow sofware Hyper-V software to work better by using hardware capabilities. But really, with Sun (Oracle) VirtualBox, who on earth needs it? VirtualBox is an extremely good piece of software, even better than the VMWare bloat-ware. I would use a VM purely to try out a new piece of software that I don’t want to destroy my primary Window’s install, that is the only time I’d use VM.

Not to mention Sun’s VM application behaves oh so much better than Hyper V. Gotta love the DirectX and OpenGL support as well.

@aln688 wrote:

Aero snap and aero shake, lol (whacky names), I’d never use those. I use Window’s in “classic” XP mode, the screen above was just to see if adding the “Desktop Experience” feature works, obviously it did. That’s amazing, I thought the same as you, the Show Desktop button, I kept reaching for it and activating the time, not to mention my mouse is usually over on the left.

Aesthically-speaking, I’ve always felt that Microsoft Windows was designed to focus your attention on the bottom left corner of the screen. Maybe you’ve noticed it as well. Do you find yourself constantly looking at the start orb in Vista/7? LOL! Not to mention I do a lot of searching for common apps (add/remove programs, device manager, command prompt, etc) in the start search feature so my mouse is always focused on the left side instead. Call it a thing of habit but I got used to it.

@aln688 wrote:

So doesn’t AutoBanIPLite work on Server 2008 R2? It sounds like a great app. That’s unbelievable, 40,000 attempts in one day? Wow.

Hey its only a miniscule 28 attempts per minute or every every 2.14 seconds. It’s mostly from China and they always use a brute force dictionary attack under the Administrator account. Probably some self-injecting code type thingy (im not programming expert) that they run. Stupid Chinese. LOL

@aln688 wrote:

You’re right, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 are almost the same, just a slightly tweaked kernel in the latter. Just curious, what version of IIS is on Server 2008? The last time I thought about running a server was Windows 2000, then I used desktop OS’s, then discovered Server 2008 R2.

The console in Server 2008 I use for FTP is IIS 6.0.

[Anonymous]

@aln688 wrote:

What do you mean by saying your BIOS is slow? If the BIOS ran on the .NET runtime I’d agree completely (that’s a horrible thought)! Maybe you mean the detection of devices in as the BIOS is going through its startup process? I’ve disabled a lot in my BIOS, on-board sound, on-board NIC, parallel and serial ports, as much as I can get away with.

Detection of devices… correct. Not to mention the Intel Matrix Storage Controller software that I can’t disable. I never thought of disabling my onboard NIC, sound, p+s ports i’ll give it a try see if it helps.

@aln688 wrote:

I agree completely, Hyper-V is useless. In my BIOS I have a feature to allow sofware Hyper-V software to work better by using hardware capabilities. But really, with Sun (Oracle) VirtualBox, who on earth needs it? VirtualBox is an extremely good piece of software, even better than the VMWare bloat-ware. I would use a VM purely to try out a new piece of software that I don’t want to destroy my primary Window’s install, that is the only time I’d use VM.

Not to mention Sun’s VM application behaves oh so much better than Hyper V. Gotta love the DirectX and OpenGL support as well.

@aln688 wrote:

Aero snap and aero shake, lol (whacky names), I’d never use those. I use Window’s in “classic” XP mode, the screen above was just to see if adding the “Desktop Experience” feature works, obviously it did. That’s amazing, I thought the same as you, the Show Desktop button, I kept reaching for it and activating the time, not to mention my mouse is usually over on the left.

Aesthically-speaking, I’ve always felt that Microsoft Windows was designed to focus your attention on the bottom left corner of the screen. Maybe you’ve noticed it as well. Do you find yourself constantly looking at the start orb in Vista/7? LOL! Not to mention I do a lot of searching for common apps (add/remove programs, device manager, command prompt, etc) in the start search feature so my mouse is always focused on the left side instead. Call it a thing of habit but I got used to it.

@aln688 wrote:

So doesn’t AutoBanIPLite work on Server 2008 R2? It sounds like a great app. That’s unbelievable, 40,000 attempts in one day? Wow.

Hey its only a miniscule 28 attempts per minute or every every 2.14 seconds. It’s mostly from China and they always use a brute force dictionary attack under the Administrator account. Probably some self-injecting code type thingy (im not programming expert) that they run. Stupid Chinese. LOL

@aln688 wrote:

You’re right, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 are almost the same, just a slightly tweaked kernel in the latter. Just curious, what version of IIS is on Server 2008? The last time I thought about running a server was Windows 2000, then I used desktop OS’s, then discovered Server 2008 R2.

The console in Server 2008 I use for FTP is IIS 6.0.

[pondo]

I love VirtualBox. I use it to run Ubuntu on this machine for development.

I would love to see more changes in Server 2012, Server 8, Windows Hibachi, or whatever they shall call it. I’d like to see them optimize it further. I did fine Windows Server 2008 R2 was much faster on SSD drives then R1 was. I am currently using my R1 machine for media server in my huge house. The kids watch movies on it that I approve rather then having cable TV where they can be exposed to things I don’t want them to see. It has been working great over the past 2 years.

I am using R2 as my main server.

I am getting ideas sitting on the deck sipping coffee on the laptop (I might put R2 on it anyone know if it is good on laptops? I currently have vista x64 on this HP. I would like to still further my R2 custom build, I might just make one for laptops as well if it will work out. I want to create a custom build of R2 that will look good and still be fast. I would like to do many things with it. I just gotta find the time with my chaotic household and my 3 demons, I mean, children. Ha ha!

[Anonymous]

I love VirtualBox. I use it to run Ubuntu on this machine for development.

I would love to see more changes in Server 2012, Server 8, Windows Hibachi, or whatever they shall call it. I’d like to see them optimize it further. I did fine Windows Server 2008 R2 was much faster on SSD drives then R1 was. I am currently using my R1 machine for media server in my huge house. The kids watch movies on it that I approve rather then having cable TV where they can be exposed to things I don’t want them to see. It has been working great over the past 2 years.

I am using R2 as my main server.

I am getting ideas sitting on the deck sipping coffee on the laptop (I might put R2 on it anyone know if it is good on laptops? I currently have vista x64 on this HP. I would like to still further my R2 custom build, I might just make one for laptops as well if it will work out. I want to create a custom build of R2 that will look good and still be fast. I would like to do many things with it. I just gotta find the time with my chaotic household and my 3 demons, I mean, children. Ha ha!

[Indrek]

@halladayrules wrote:

Try this out Indrek and post your results:
Download the BootTimer.exe utility and run them under these conditions below:
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic (Delayed Start):
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic:

Tried each option 3 times.
Superfetch set to Automatic: boot time varied from 70 to 124 seconds (average 94 seconds).
Superfetch set to Delayed Start: boot time varied from 83 to 109 seconds (average 92 seconds).

Variations within either group were much larger than the difference between the averages, so at least in my case Superfetch doesn’t seem to have much of an impact on boot time.

[Anonymous]

@halladayrules wrote:

Try this out Indrek and post your results:
Download the BootTimer.exe utility and run them under these conditions below:
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic (Delayed Start):
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic:

Tried each option 3 times.
Superfetch set to Automatic: boot time varied from 70 to 124 seconds (average 94 seconds).
Superfetch set to Delayed Start: boot time varied from 83 to 109 seconds (average 92 seconds).

Variations within either group were much larger than the difference between the averages, so at least in my case Superfetch doesn’t seem to have much of an impact on boot time.

[pondo]

Ok with my media server witch is running
2008R1—> Boot time–>240 secs. SF—>On
2008R1—> Boot time–>220 secs. SF—>Off

Keep in mind this is running a TON of things in startup required for media.

R2—>Boot time–>130 secs. SF—>Off

windows 7—>Boot time–>38 secs. SF—>Off
windows 7—>Boot time–>85 secs. SF—>Off

[Anonymous]

Ok with my media server witch is running
2008R1—> Boot time–>240 secs. SF—>On
2008R1—> Boot time–>220 secs. SF—>Off

Keep in mind this is running a TON of things in startup required for media.

R2—>Boot time–>130 secs. SF—>Off

windows 7—>Boot time–>38 secs. SF—>Off
windows 7—>Boot time–>85 secs. SF—>Off

[aviv00]

WES7 64BIT on vhd on ssd 15 sec from post 😉
but its got vlited and tweaked

[Anonymous]

WES7 64BIT on vhd on ssd 15 sec from post 😉
but its got vlited and tweaked

[pondo]

Oh SSDs are damn fast.

[Anonymous]

Oh SSDs are damn fast.

[halladayrules]

@Indrek wrote:

@halladayrules wrote:

Try this out Indrek and post your results:
Download the BootTimer.exe utility and run them under these conditions below:
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic (Delayed Start):
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic:

Tried each option 3 times.
Superfetch set to Automatic: boot time varied from 70 to 124 seconds (average 94 seconds).
Superfetch set to Delayed Start: boot time varied from 83 to 109 seconds (average 92 seconds).

Variations within either group were much larger than the difference between the averages, so at least in my case Superfetch doesn’t seem to have much of an impact on boot time.

I did a similar experiment on Server 2008 32-bit under certain conditions. Here are my results:

Cold Reboot Times of Windows Server 2008 32-bit.

Superfetch ON, EBoostr ON

Test 1: 60 seconds
Test 2: 65 seconds
Test 3: 62 seconds
Test 4: 66 seconds
Test 5: 61 seconds

Avg Time: 62.80 seconds

Superfetch OFF, EBoostr ON

Test 1: 65 seconds
Test 2: 61 seconds
Test 3: 60 seconds
Test 4: 61 seconds
Test 5: 66 seconds

Avg Time: 62.60 seconds

Superfetch ON, EBoostr Off

Test 1: 79 seconds
Test 2: 78 seconds
Test 3: 84 seconds
Test 4: 83 seconds
Test 5: 79 seconds

Avg Time: 80.60 seconds

Superfetch Off, EBoostr Off

Test 1: 83 seconds
Test 2: 81 seconds
Test 3: 83 seconds
Test 4: 80 seconds
Test 5: 82 seconds

Avg Time: 81.80 seconds

As you can see, eBoostr is providing most of the punch when it comes to my boot time because caching from a flash device is faster than caching from your hard drive. It really doesn’t even make any sense for me to run Superfetch on 2008 it’ll just be eating up cpu and disk cycles, which would make that irratating grinding sound on the hard drive and drive me insane lol. Eboostr is nice and quiet. 😛 I’d be willing to bet if you bought a readyboost enabled drive on your Windows 7 machine you would get reboot times within ~10 seconds close to mine Indrek.

[Anonymous]

@Indrek wrote:

@halladayrules wrote:

Try this out Indrek and post your results:
Download the BootTimer.exe utility and run them under these conditions below:
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic (Delayed Start):
Boot Time with Superfetch Service on Automatic:

Tried each option 3 times.
Superfetch set to Automatic: boot time varied from 70 to 124 seconds (average 94 seconds).
Superfetch set to Delayed Start: boot time varied from 83 to 109 seconds (average 92 seconds).

Variations within either group were much larger than the difference between the averages, so at least in my case Superfetch doesn’t seem to have much of an impact on boot time.

I did a similar experiment on Server 2008 32-bit under certain conditions. Here are my results:

Cold Reboot Times of Windows Server 2008 32-bit.

Superfetch ON, EBoostr ON

Test 1: 60 seconds
Test 2: 65 seconds
Test 3: 62 seconds
Test 4: 66 seconds
Test 5: 61 seconds

Avg Time: 62.80 seconds

Superfetch OFF, EBoostr ON

Test 1: 65 seconds
Test 2: 61 seconds
Test 3: 60 seconds
Test 4: 61 seconds
Test 5: 66 seconds

Avg Time: 62.60 seconds

Superfetch ON, EBoostr Off

Test 1: 79 seconds
Test 2: 78 seconds
Test 3: 84 seconds
Test 4: 83 seconds
Test 5: 79 seconds

Avg Time: 80.60 seconds

Superfetch Off, EBoostr Off

Test 1: 83 seconds
Test 2: 81 seconds
Test 3: 83 seconds
Test 4: 80 seconds
Test 5: 82 seconds

Avg Time: 81.80 seconds

As you can see, eBoostr is providing most of the punch when it comes to my boot time because caching from a flash device is faster than caching from your hard drive. It really doesn’t even make any sense for me to run Superfetch on 2008 it’ll just be eating up cpu and disk cycles, which would make that irratating grinding sound on the hard drive and drive me insane lol. Eboostr is nice and quiet. 😛 I’d be willing to bet if you bought a readyboost enabled drive on your Windows 7 machine you would get reboot times within ~10 seconds close to mine Indrek.

[Indrek]

@halladayrules wrote:

As you can see, eBoostr is providing most of the punch when it comes to my boot time because caching from a flash device is faster than caching from your hard drive. It really doesn’t even make any sense for me to run Superfetch on 2008 it’ll just be eating up cpu and disk cycles, which would make that irratating grinding sound on the hard drive and drive me insane lol. Eboostr is nice and quiet. 😛 I’d be willing to bet if you bought a readyboost enabled drive on your Windows 7 machine you would get reboot times within ~10 seconds close to mine Indrek.

Perhaps. But like I explained before, reboot times aren’t important to me. Plus, I have a laptop, so carrying it around with a flash drive constantly plugged in isn’t a very good idea – too many opportunities for bumping it against something and damaging the motherboard.

[Anonymous]

@halladayrules wrote:

As you can see, eBoostr is providing most of the punch when it comes to my boot time because caching from a flash device is faster than caching from your hard drive. It really doesn’t even make any sense for me to run Superfetch on 2008 it’ll just be eating up cpu and disk cycles, which would make that irratating grinding sound on the hard drive and drive me insane lol. Eboostr is nice and quiet. 😛 I’d be willing to bet if you bought a readyboost enabled drive on your Windows 7 machine you would get reboot times within ~10 seconds close to mine Indrek.

Perhaps. But like I explained before, reboot times aren’t important to me. Plus, I have a laptop, so carrying it around with a flash drive constantly plugged in isn’t a very good idea – too many opportunities for bumping it against something and damaging the motherboard.

[pondo]

Wow I think I’m sold on eboostr! Thanks much for the insight!

[Anonymous]

Wow I think I’m sold on eboostr! Thanks much for the insight!

[halladayrules]

@pondo wrote:

Wow I think I’m sold on eboostr! Thanks much for the insight!

Your results will vary depending on the type of drive you have. I have a 2GB drive that reads at 20,000 KB/sec while my cousin has one that only reads at half that speed. He has R2 installed on his machine and his boot times didn’t go down nearly as well as mine did, but thats to be expected since I have a faster access flash drive. Even if your boot time doesn’t go down tremendously you will definitely notice a difference in application responsiveness.

[Anonymous]

@pondo wrote:

Wow I think I’m sold on eboostr! Thanks much for the insight!

Your results will vary depending on the type of drive you have. I have a 2GB drive that reads at 20,000 KB/sec while my cousin has one that only reads at half that speed. He has R2 installed on his machine and his boot times didn’t go down nearly as well as mine did, but thats to be expected since I have a faster access flash drive. Even if your boot time doesn’t go down tremendously you will definitely notice a difference in application responsiveness.

[hoak]

@aln688 wrote:

Why Server 2008 [R2] over Windows Vista/7?

For me the answer is much simpler then some of the others given here; if it doesn’t work I can’t use it and get work done — so fault tolerance and stability seal the deal for me.

Among other things I do Sound Design for games, film, theater, and television — and I have several applications and that will consistently BSOD Windows 7.

Moreover on some chip sets even with its newer kernel architecture and HAL Windows 7 has some of the same audio reproduction issues as Windows XP where you’ll get drop-outs and popping — and while these issues have been blamed on some chip sets, the issues don’t prevail on the Windows Server OS’s…

In a professional audio production environment, as I’m sure is the case in any other professional production environment where time is money; these short-comings just aren’t tolerable, and Microsoft and the staffs of large sound and film studios have made no headway to resolving them on Windows 7…

I also agree with yumeyao’s remarks about all the ridiculous automation in Windows 7, which is well and fine for a Consumer ‘User Land‘ OS, but in professional production environment can work across purposes of what you need the OS to do, and be a time consuming pain in the ass to reconcile…

:geek:

[Anonymous]

@aln688 wrote:

Why Server 2008 [R2] over Windows Vista/7?

For me the answer is much simpler then some of the others given here; if it doesn’t work I can’t use it and get work done — so fault tolerance and stability seal the deal for me.

Among other things I do Sound Design for games, film, theater, and television — and I have several applications and that will consistently BSOD Windows 7.

Moreover on some chip sets even with its newer kernel architecture and HAL Windows 7 has some of the same audio reproduction issues as Windows XP where you’ll get drop-outs and popping — and while these issues have been blamed on some chip sets, the issues don’t prevail on the Windows Server OS’s…

In a professional audio production environment, as I’m sure is the case in any other professional production environment where time is money; these short-comings just aren’t tolerable, and Microsoft and the staffs of large sound and film studios have made no headway to resolving them on Windows 7…

I also agree with yumeyao’s remarks about all the ridiculous automation in Windows 7, which is well and fine for a Consumer ‘User Land‘ OS, but in professional production environment can work across purposes of what you need the OS to do, and be a time consuming pain in the ass to reconcile…

:geek:

[Indrek]

Interesting… Out of pure interest, which applications are BSOD-ing your machine? I’m only asking because I’m into audio recording/production myself, and have considered upgrading my current XP-based setup to Win7, so I’m interested in any potential compatibility issues.

Re audio pops/dropouts, in my experience those are usually caused by underpowered hardware or suboptimal drivers, but then you’ve probably researched this issue thoroughly already. Did you attempt to pin the problem to any specific component of Windows 7 (eg. by disabling potential suspects, to have Win7’s list of running processes/services/etc. match that of Windows Server)?

[Anonymous]

Interesting… Out of pure interest, which applications are BSOD-ing your machine? I’m only asking because I’m into audio recording/production myself, and have considered upgrading my current XP-based setup to Win7, so I’m interested in any potential compatibility issues.

Re audio pops/dropouts, in my experience those are usually caused by underpowered hardware or suboptimal drivers, but then you’ve probably researched this issue thoroughly already. Did you attempt to pin the problem to any specific component of Windows 7 (eg. by disabling potential suspects, to have Win7’s list of running processes/services/etc. match that of Windows Server)?

[hoak]

[s:30k3nd9y]Laseep… Opst.

:roll:[/s:30k3nd9y]

[Anonymous]

[s:30k3nd9y]Laseep… Opst.

:roll:[/s:30k3nd9y]

[Indrek]

[s:kn7ps9fi]Hhu? Tosp wtah?

Ho eomc no. Tjus ebuacse uyo ntdemuissdoor ym iionetstnn ni eht ethro pcito soend’t mena uoy dloush taek gevytrnhei I spot sa a elornpas atcatk gsnatia oyu. Ro ear uyo llryae atth imtaermu dan pialcbean fo gisnee tpas a eimlps msgnrnieutsnaddi?[/s:kn7ps9fi]

[Anonymous]

[s:kn7ps9fi]Hhu? Tosp wtah?

Ho eomc no. Tjus ebuacse uyo ntdemuissdoor ym iionetstnn ni eht ethro pcito soend’t mena uoy dloush taek gevytrnhei I spot sa a elornpas atcatk gsnatia oyu. Ro ear uyo llryae atth imtaermu dan pialcbean fo gisnee tpas a eimlps msgnrnieutsnaddi?[/s:kn7ps9fi]

[hoak]

@Indrek wrote:

[s:1vicb0ad]Opts ahtw?[/s:1vicb0ad]

[s:1vicb0ad]Nrltiolg…[/s:1vicb0ad]
@Indrek wrote:

[s:1vicb0ad]Tjus bueseac yuo idnoedmtsosru ym niniontste ni eht thero picot odesn’t name oyu lshdou teka tinrygehev I spto sa a pealonrs aacttk tisaang uoy. Ro aer ouy aelyrl atht eamtumri nad pianebacl fo eiegsn astp a ilpmse uaisdnnenitdmgrs?[/s:1vicb0ad]

[s:1vicb0ad]Lltro earskmr ikle htis ithree/ro rwsat-nam hlusbtil nerutmag, atth eesppusospr hitree I odrudnmosesti yuo (eewrh I lclyrea idd ton), ro I ma ‘mtameuir nad aaibnlepc’. Shit si bitgnai, tinsugnli, mrcoosohpi shtiblul atth ahs on cplae no isth orumf, dan yuo wnok ti.

Wath’s oerm, yuo onkw hte erthe’s mreo nthe tow tatnavseiler in hsti sutntiaio; eht mtlssipe wsarne eehr bgnie hte stmo lyleik: atth oyu, era tlinlrgo.

On reweh no htsi moufr ro ni oyru otps si ti ni eneveicd htta uoy’er elrmyoet sieneerttd ni oiadu oontuicrdp, nad vene fi yuo ewer, ym spot ossreespppu eswrsna ot ryuo csorhomiop dna oinsindsuegu ttpmeat ta pelh, a ycipvolrti yuo’ev pyadteerle nmrsoddeatet.

Hatt yuo eocn rmoe, aetrf genbi pyloleit edeproarhc oprdnes tihw erom onstirscihi, eolpainrzsed unilsts ni tey eoarnth dhrtae epttyr cumh asels hte dela: ouy rae irntllog, inlktgas, ro npusguir smeo rheto idciuoslru dborome rndvie uluianssriob deagan tath hsa on claep no ihst omruf.

Og ehre fro itsh tsor fo higtn, I’m eurs ouy cna nfid etlpny fo eplope ot edgnliu oyu ni hatw vere ti si oyu’er nogkilo ofr…

:roll:[/s:1vicb0ad]

[Anonymous]

@Indrek wrote:

[s:1vicb0ad]Opts ahtw?[/s:1vicb0ad]

[s:1vicb0ad]Nrltiolg…[/s:1vicb0ad]
@Indrek wrote:

[s:1vicb0ad]Tjus bueseac yuo idnoedmtsosru ym niniontste ni eht thero picot odesn’t name oyu lshdou teka tinrygehev I spto sa a pealonrs aacttk tisaang uoy. Ro aer ouy aelyrl atht eamtumri nad pianebacl fo eiegsn astp a ilpmse uaisdnnenitdmgrs?[/s:1vicb0ad]

[s:1vicb0ad]Lltro earskmr ikle htis ithree/ro rwsat-nam hlusbtil nerutmag, atth eesppusospr hitree I odrudnmosesti yuo (eewrh I lclyrea idd ton), ro I ma ‘mtameuir nad aaibnlepc’. Shit si bitgnai, tinsugnli, mrcoosohpi shtiblul atth ahs on cplae no isth orumf, dan yuo wnok ti.

Wath’s oerm, yuo onkw hte erthe’s mreo nthe tow tatnavseiler in hsti sutntiaio; eht mtlssipe wsarne eehr bgnie hte stmo lyleik: atth oyu, era tlinlrgo.

On reweh no htsi moufr ro ni oyru otps si ti ni eneveicd htta uoy’er elrmyoet sieneerttd ni oiadu oontuicrdp, nad vene fi yuo ewer, ym spot ossreespppu eswrsna ot ryuo csorhomiop dna oinsindsuegu ttpmeat ta pelh, a ycipvolrti yuo’ev pyadteerle nmrsoddeatet.

Hatt yuo eocn rmoe, aetrf genbi pyloleit edeproarhc oprdnes tihw erom onstirscihi, eolpainrzsed unilsts ni tey eoarnth dhrtae epttyr cumh asels hte dela: ouy rae irntllog, inlktgas, ro npusguir smeo rheto idciuoslru dborome rndvie uluianssriob deagan tath hsa on claep no ihst omruf.

Og ehre fro itsh tsor fo higtn, I’m eurs ouy cna nfid etlpny fo eplope ot edgnliu oyu ni hatw vere ti si oyu’er nogkilo ofr…

:roll:[/s:1vicb0ad]

[halladayrules]

If you ask me, Indrek was just mearly stating his opinion about your idea of a separate forum. You calling him a troll is a personal attack against him and it needs to stop.

[Anonymous]

If you ask me, Indrek was just mearly stating his opinion about your idea of a separate forum. You calling him a troll is a personal attack against him and it needs to stop.

[hoak]

[s:f3o2cx6h]On, I’m ianclgl mih a llrto orf sih sutnsil nda aprotrepnpiia erraskm in sih gfniowlol stsop; ared emth ni derro… Suovlbyoi I’m ‘jtus mlreey antsitg ym oiionnp’ sa llwe, iwhch si veecdnide ni hsi guniitnsl sremrak. Rea uyo gengsugtsi I olusdh post nhrgocpeira imh, ubt eh oshdlu eb lawoled ot voiec nsulsit usbecae hsi ‘snnpiooi’ rea mero aldiv nhet mnie? Ni iherte csea I tnehlosy aeger, I uohlds ton ledinug Niredk hteufrr dan dieervcsod ihst romfu ash a tuem eurfate os I nwo’t ese shi spots, wchih uolhsd svloe het etarmt leapnernmyt.

:|[/s:f3o2cx6h]

[Anonymous]

[s:f3o2cx6h]On, I’m ianclgl mih a llrto orf sih sutnsil nda aprotrepnpiia erraskm in sih gfniowlol stsop; ared emth ni derro… Suovlbyoi I’m ‘jtus mlreey antsitg ym oiionnp’ sa llwe, iwhch si veecdnide ni hsi guniitnsl sremrak. Rea uyo gengsugtsi I olusdh post nhrgocpeira imh, ubt eh oshdlu eb lawoled ot voiec nsulsit usbecae hsi ‘snnpiooi’ rea mero aldiv nhet mnie? Ni iherte csea I tnehlosy aeger, I uohlds ton ledinug Niredk hteufrr dan dieervcsod ihst romfu ash a tuem eurfate os I nwo’t ese shi spots, wchih uolhsd svloe het etarmt leapnernmyt.

:|[/s:f3o2cx6h]

[halladayrules]

There you go. Problem solved.

[Anonymous]

There you go. Problem solved.

[Indrek]

@halladayrules wrote:

Your results will vary depending on the type of drive you have. I have a 2GB drive that reads at 20,000 KB/sec while my cousin has one that only reads at half that speed. He has R2 installed on his machine and his boot times didn’t go down nearly as well as mine did, but thats to be expected since I have a faster access flash drive. Even if your boot time doesn’t go down tremendously you will definitely notice a difference in application responsiveness.

What flash drive are you using for eBoostr? I’ve been thinking of trying it out on a couple of older XP machines that could use the performance boost.

[Anonymous]

@halladayrules wrote:

Your results will vary depending on the type of drive you have. I have a 2GB drive that reads at 20,000 KB/sec while my cousin has one that only reads at half that speed. He has R2 installed on his machine and his boot times didn’t go down nearly as well as mine did, but thats to be expected since I have a faster access flash drive. Even if your boot time doesn’t go down tremendously you will definitely notice a difference in application responsiveness.

What flash drive are you using for eBoostr? I’ve been thinking of trying it out on a couple of older XP machines that could use the performance boost.

[halladayrules]

@Indrek wrote:

What flash drive are you using for eBoostr? I’ve been thinking of trying it out on a couple of older XP machines that could use the performance boost.

I was bored one day and i filled out this forum to request more information from Columbia College and they shipped me a free 2GB flash drive preloaded with their college stuff on it. It wasn’t anything special. It doesn’t have to be high performance drive or anything. The 20MB read speed I was getting was the cached-enabled access times. Without eboostr the drive was probably only able to read at half that, with write speeds of around 4-5MB/sec. Nothing fancy. Really makes Server 2008 more snappier I can tell you that. I was working on a buddys computer a few days ago and i was upgrading his AV, installing crap I had put on my flash drive (Columbia college one) and I completely forgot I left the USB drive in the front usb port and when we went took side panel off to see how many memory slots he had I bent the connector all to hell and it doesnt work no more. LOL so now I am just using my RAM stick as a caching device in eboostr. I have 4GB installed on my machine and I allocated 512MB to eboostr. Boot times aren’t as fast as it was on USB stick but I’ve only taken a 5 second drop in boot time. Not bad.

[Anonymous]

@Indrek wrote:

What flash drive are you using for eBoostr? I’ve been thinking of trying it out on a couple of older XP machines that could use the performance boost.

I was bored one day and i filled out this forum to request more information from Columbia College and they shipped me a free 2GB flash drive preloaded with their college stuff on it. It wasn’t anything special. It doesn’t have to be high performance drive or anything. The 20MB read speed I was getting was the cached-enabled access times. Without eboostr the drive was probably only able to read at half that, with write speeds of around 4-5MB/sec. Nothing fancy. Really makes Server 2008 more snappier I can tell you that. I was working on a buddys computer a few days ago and i was upgrading his AV, installing crap I had put on my flash drive (Columbia college one) and I completely forgot I left the USB drive in the front usb port and when we went took side panel off to see how many memory slots he had I bent the connector all to hell and it doesnt work no more. LOL so now I am just using my RAM stick as a caching device in eboostr. I have 4GB installed on my machine and I allocated 512MB to eboostr. Boot times aren’t as fast as it was on USB stick but I’ve only taken a 5 second drop in boot time. Not bad.

[Indrek]

Thanks.
I’ve mostly been using flash drives for storage (and the occasional OS install), so I haven’t really cared about read/write speeds that much, just capacity. I just benchmarked my 4 GB Cruzer and it averages at 24 MB/s, which sounds good enough. I’ll try it out on an older XP machine with 1 GB RAM and see how it goes.

[Anonymous]

Thanks.
I’ve mostly been using flash drives for storage (and the occasional OS install), so I haven’t really cared about read/write speeds that much, just capacity. I just benchmarked my 4 GB Cruzer and it averages at 24 MB/s, which sounds good enough. I’ll try it out on an older XP machine with 1 GB RAM and see how it goes.

[halladayrules]

@Indrek wrote:

Thanks.
I’ve mostly been using flash drives for storage (and the occasional OS install), so I haven’t really cared about read/write speeds that much, just capacity. I just benchmarked my 4 GB Cruzer and it averages at 24 MB/s, which sounds good enough. I’ll try it out on an older XP machine with 1 GB RAM and see how it goes.

No problem. When you allocate X amount of RAM to your stick, it will create a hidden folder called “Eboostr” on the root of your drive. So if you ever need to free up space without formatting your stick you can just show hidden files and folder and delete the eboostr folder to restore your space. Not saying you will ever need to do this, but occasionally when you need to store a large ISO (for example an OS) you can temporarily remove eboostr and just re-allocate it later. Also I believe you can just resize the allocation space within the GUI itself. I never tried that cause I always had a fixed number that I liked to use.

[Anonymous]

@Indrek wrote:

Thanks.
I’ve mostly been using flash drives for storage (and the occasional OS install), so I haven’t really cared about read/write speeds that much, just capacity. I just benchmarked my 4 GB Cruzer and it averages at 24 MB/s, which sounds good enough. I’ll try it out on an older XP machine with 1 GB RAM and see how it goes.

No problem. When you allocate X amount of RAM to your stick, it will create a hidden folder called “Eboostr” on the root of your drive. So if you ever need to free up space without formatting your stick you can just show hidden files and folder and delete the eboostr folder to restore your space. Not saying you will ever need to do this, but occasionally when you need to store a large ISO (for example an OS) you can temporarily remove eboostr and just re-allocate it later. Also I believe you can just resize the allocation space within the GUI itself. I never tried that cause I always had a fixed number that I liked to use.

[hoak]

While eBoostr appears to be a fine product that delivers on promises made, as does SuperFetch and et al. — I can’t help wondering with the ridiculous amount of RAM installed on so many systems if it might not just be more efficient in some cases considering how many Workstation actually are used and the kinds of application run — if all the elaborate automated memory management were just disabled (as well as other fancy clever automation), and the User just left all the applications he regularly uses running — if more resonsive results might be achieved…

Many Windows Users that I’m familiar with have cultured habits of what I guess I’d call ‘resource hygiene‘ probably based on experience learned with systems with less available memory, and the performance hit from having too much running at once. But I see a lot of UNIX, Linux and OSX Users don’t have this proclivity and have virtually everything they use running all the time… Windows is also strapped with a user interface that makes managing a lot of open applications less ‘tidy‘ and more manually intensive then some of the Linux Window Mangers like the TWM’s; so this may play a role as well…

The exception to all of this would appear to be those those really resource intensive applications and games that ‘need everything‘, but then again: shouldn’t Windows more efficiently manage resources of running applications and not really benefit from cache and automated memory management offered by tools like eBoostr and SuperFetch if everything is always running?

😕

[Anonymous]

While eBoostr appears to be a fine product that delivers on promises made, as does SuperFetch and et al. — I can’t help wondering with the ridiculous amount of RAM installed on so many systems if it might not just be more efficient in some cases considering how many Workstation actually are used and the kinds of application run — if all the elaborate automated memory management were just disabled (as well as other fancy clever automation), and the User just left all the applications he regularly uses running — if more resonsive results might be achieved…

Many Windows Users that I’m familiar with have cultured habits of what I guess I’d call ‘resource hygiene‘ probably based on experience learned with systems with less available memory, and the performance hit from having too much running at once. But I see a lot of UNIX, Linux and OSX Users don’t have this proclivity and have virtually everything they use running all the time… Windows is also strapped with a user interface that makes managing a lot of open applications less ‘tidy‘ and more manually intensive then some of the Linux Window Mangers like the TWM’s; so this may play a role as well…

The exception to all of this would appear to be those those really resource intensive applications and games that ‘need everything‘, but then again: shouldn’t Windows more efficiently manage resources of running applications and not really benefit from cache and automated memory management offered by tools like eBoostr and SuperFetch if everything is always running?

😕

[halladayrules]

@hoak wrote:

The exception to all of this would appear to be those those really resource intensive applications and games that ‘need everything‘, but then again: shouldn’t Windows more efficiently manage resources of running applications and not really benefit from cache and automated memory management offered by tools like eBoostr and SuperFetch if everything is always running?

Sounds like a server to me. After all this is what Windows Server does best. Nice insight you have provided Hoak, but I can see a small problem with this. Memory leak. Some applications I’ve used in the past are sad excuses/poorly written and run a muck in Task Manager. I think it would depend solely on how much RAM you have. It can be managed too. For example you can use Windows Resource Manager to prevent memory leaks in Windows Server. One application that could definitely benefit from your idea is Firefox. I’ve loaded Firefox several times after startup and when I leave my computer idle for awhile and click Firefox again I notice it is still sluggish to load. Leaving it on would definitely yield a performance gain.

[Anonymous]

@hoak wrote:

The exception to all of this would appear to be those those really resource intensive applications and games that ‘need everything‘, but then again: shouldn’t Windows more efficiently manage resources of running applications and not really benefit from cache and automated memory management offered by tools like eBoostr and SuperFetch if everything is always running?

Sounds like a server to me. After all this is what Windows Server does best. Nice insight you have provided Hoak, but I can see a small problem with this. Memory leak. Some applications I’ve used in the past are sad excuses/poorly written and run a muck in Task Manager. I think it would depend solely on how much RAM you have. It can be managed too. For example you can use Windows Resource Manager to prevent memory leaks in Windows Server. One application that could definitely benefit from your idea is Firefox. I’ve loaded Firefox several times after startup and when I leave my computer idle for awhile and click Firefox again I notice it is still sluggish to load. Leaving it on would definitely yield a performance gain.

[pondo]

which is more I/O read intense—-> win7 or winsrv08r2?

[Anonymous]

which is more I/O read intense—-> win7 or winsrv08r2?

[hoak]

Well you’d have to qualify the answer for it to be factual and useful; for example: for default installations Windows 7 will be more disk i/o intensive due to SuperFetch, the Indexing Service, et al..

For customized configurations where both Operating Systems are running a rougly contrugent complement of services and processes with similar settings — i/o traffic should be roughly the same, though Server 2008 R2 may still come up a little quieter…

😐

[Anonymous]

Well you’d have to qualify the answer for it to be factual and useful; for example: for default installations Windows 7 will be more disk i/o intensive due to SuperFetch, the Indexing Service, et al..

For customized configurations where both Operating Systems are running a rougly contrugent complement of services and processes with similar settings — i/o traffic should be roughly the same, though Server 2008 R2 may still come up a little quieter…

😐

[whelp]

What’s wrong in Superfetch? I enabled it in r2 and it seems to be working, not sure how I can test it. There are some .pf files in the prefetch folder already, does it means everything works?

[Anonymous]

What’s wrong in Superfetch? I enabled it in r2 and it seems to be working, not sure how I can test it. There are some .pf files in the prefetch folder already, does it means everything works?

[grabdexter]

Windows Server 2008 R2 end-of-life mainstream supported ended back on January 13, 2015. However, there is a more critical date looming. On January 14, 2020, Microsoft will end all support for Windows Server 2008 R2. … If you are still running Windows Server 2008 R2 the time to start planning is now.
shareit app vidmate Vidmate app

[Rohan Kumar]

Firewalls are not immune to CVE’s, they still get their fair share regardless of the product, some more serious than others. All it takes is one to be exploited and they now have access to a system that has a boat load of known vulnerabilities that will never be patched; from there they can move laterally throughout the company.

[Author]

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