[JonusC]

@RemixedCat wrote:

Not much… Just a few people coming on here asking why we are using a server OS instead of windows 7. Dude, Why are those people even on here questioning us using a server ON A SERVER FORUM!? They say we should just use windows 7 and “save the work” or something like that LOLz. This confuses the hell out of me. Do they have a high curiosity? Becuase they are not wording it correctly.

My thought’s on that is that they are either “noobs” (ignorant PC users who are indeed curious, looking for solid advice on the benefits of using a hacked Server OS over the consumer-targeted equivalent), or they are sneaky auditors keeping an eye on the community for illegal activity. Probably the former.

@RemixedCat wrote:

It is annoying when my co-workers bring up windows 7 becuase I am tired of everyone at my work asking me why I use a server OS and I try to explain to them, they get cross eyed and make a “huh” face about it. It cracks me up all the time. The minute I talk about superfetch and windows system resource manager they look at me as if I were speaking japanese!

When people ask me, I keep it simple…. Something like this – “Well, a Server version of Windows is designed to power hundreds or even thousands of computers in a company building, where it’s unacceptable for any sort of downtime or room-for-error – having technology like that right on your home workstation just makes sense if you’re serious about keeping things smooth, safe and reliable”. Just off the top of my head there, it’s friday night and I’m into the scotch 😆

@RemixedCat wrote:

Now here’s something odd… I explained what it was to my mom (witch almost never gets me) about superfetch (she has Vista x32 Home premium on an acer dual core laptop) and I only had to explain it to her ONCE and she figured it out (and she is normally technically declined, but has ben making great improvements) when I have to tell co-workers like 10 times before they get it and they are “seasoned” computer experts. I guess ego can go a long way! LOLz!

Said “seasoned” computer experts are probably just tainted by their own biased opinions… not trying to sound like an ass with that, it’s a sad truth that 90% of experts are tied down by fundamental education or old-fashioned linear thinking. It’s the case with pretty much any industry… do you mind if I ask, are you a Westerner (living in a ‘White’ country)? Because usually it’s Caucasians who are the most biased in that regard lol (and no I’m not racist in one bit, well maybe self-racist a little… I am white Australian and most of us are idiots haha)

Anywho, yeah in regards to your project, hope it goes well man – there’s no rush for anything, we’re all busy and we gotta work before play after all 😀

[JonusC]

Although I am a fan of Windows 7 over Vista, I do agree with RemixedCat in many aspects. Vista has an absolute truck-load of new features, most complain about how slow and bloaty it is (out of the box at least) but there are so many little things in Vista/R1 that were removed from 7/R2 to please the casual computer user and “streamline” the OS.

I think Vista is amazing compared to XP, and it’s the same reason why I like Me over 98SE. Vista and Me are both similar OS’s in the way that they were “bleeding edge” and, for lack of a better term, pioneering. The development of Vista/Me was not lead/guided by the same team as XP/98, it’s the tick-tock development phase than so many giants use – “tick” being a small(ish) incremental rollout of a new OS, such like 98 was (based on 95), XP was (based on 2000) and 7 is (based on Vista); and “tock” being the major-step-forward rollouts – 95 (major update from Windows 3), Windows 2000 (the first NT-arch OS for the consumer) and Vista (a major 6.0 from WinXP/2000 which was 5.1 and 5.0 respectively).

That is a very broad point I’m making I know, but without mentioning the why’s and what’s maybe my perspective can help push this idea across.

With that said though, I do use 7 as a primary OS – not Vista. And I am thinking of going back to 2008 R2 this weekend 🙂

P.S. RemixedCat I liked your first post – if I do get back into the 2008 Workstation game, maybe we talk more about bringing some of the Vista/2008 [R1] shell features into 2008 R2?

[JonusC]

Heya AsciiWolf,

Much respect for working on this – I remember taking a look at trying to get this going back in the day, but without much luck! I think, your work here has interested me greatly to get back to 2008 R2 Server instead of Windows 7… maybe I can help out a little bit… 😛

EDIT: The rest of my reply was moved to my ‘re-introduction’ thread over here. 🙂

[JonusC]

EDIT: Moved my reply to my “re-introduction thread” over here. 😉

[JonusC]

@dezmond wrote:

How did you get NOD32 Antivirus 4 to work on Server 2008 R2?

It won’t install for me, just says that it’s not made for server applications and leaves only the option to click “finish” on the install, which just closes it.

I have a license for it and would love to use it, but I’ve no idea how you tricked it into working with 2008r2.

I don’t know if the method Arris linked to works, it’s different from how I did it. I posted this a while ago, and will repost here – it’s with the usual Orca tool.

@JonusC wrote:

Solution

Quick background:
It seems only the older MSI’s use LaunchConditions, it’s getting more common to use CustomActions I’ve noticed – probably to try and prevent people like us from doing exactly this – ha! In this case with the NOD v4.1 Beta MSI, it’s the CA “InstSuppPrepareInstall” which uses InstSupp.dll [inside the MSI] to do somesuch nonsense to, well, prepair the system I guess.

I spent about an hour figuring this one out, and was even trying to hack the InstSupp.dll, but after some random experimentation I found the way to get around it with just Orca.

Under the table “InstallUISequence”, drop the row “InstSuppPrepareInstall”. Thats it!
[attachment=0:8ljdn14y]NOD4_Fix.jpg[/attachment:8ljdn14y]
EDIT: Also had to do this as I found it would fail install…
Under the table “InstallUISequence”, drop the row “InstSuppApplyUIChanges” – it’s the one just above it, as you can see in the screenshot. NOW thats it!

Hope it works for you, it does for me =D Peace!!!

Might be worth someone investigating this further and making more notes/research for the good of the community, I discovered that method largely with trial and error. I’m not running Server OS these days anymore I’m afraid, I hope none of you original win2k8workstation old schoolers don’t miss me too much 😆 but hey, maybe i’ll be back one day? We’ll see 😉 Have fun guys…

[JonusC]

ESET System Security 4
ESET NOD32 AntiVirus 4

Both work flawlessly on Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2, as well as Windows 7.

[JonusC]

Not entirely true. If you launch a process as administrator, any additional processes that it creates will also be run as administrator. If he starts his Database client as administrator, but it still can’t write to the database file, then the only thing left to check out is permissions.

He’s already stated that he’s running as an administrator of a domain so there is additional layers of security at hand in regards to Local and Group Policy. I have a hunch that the reason why it’s happening is because the Administrators Group needed to be have Grant:Full on the program folder and it’s children, rather than just the local administrator user.

Then just run as the Administrator, and you will have full access, and won’t need to use run as admin.

Seriously, did you even read that? Just run as administrator, then you wont need to run as administrator? 😆 Besides, the ‘Run as Administrator’ context menu option is 100% useless when UAC is disabled as long as the account is actually in the Administrators group already (which in Server 2008(R2), Vista and Win7, the default account already is).

We already established a few posts back that he doesn’t need to run higher than Administrator, so you saying all that was pretty much a meaningless flame to my eye. Please actually read all the posts before you reply next time.

[JonusC]

If you need to specify a Domain and Username to grant permissions to, replace USERNAME with DOMAINUSERNAME. It will otherwise scan the Domain that the current user (administrator) is a part of for the specified username if omitted (as long as you are actively connected to the domain controller), so the DOMAIN prepender usually isn’t required in most cases unless you are (a) Doing an offline administrative task or (b) Have a multi-domain system with shared resources and User Accounts. Make sense?

Actually, i’m pretty sure ICACLS supports the USERNAME to be a Group aswell as a user name or domain/user name. As such, since you mentioned Domain, it maybe better to change USERNAME for Administrators which would apply the permissions to all users in the Administrators group across the domain (provided the Workstation is correctly configured for User Group Domain Propagation, or whatever it’s called – that thing where it transparently sees local + domain users as one and the same… or is that always on in Windows these days?)

Remember though that the ICACLS /grant simply adds permissions for the USERNAME you specify (or, it replaces them if the object(s) already have a certain permission set for that particular USERNAME). It doesn’t remove anything at all, and will still respect inherited permissions (the parent folder’s permissions if set to recurse through) which is set to true by default. In other words, if you do a /grant command for ten different users on a certain object, that object will have ten new SD (Security Descriptor) entries.

😉

Fire-up an administrative Command Prompt and do ICACLS /? for more info, Microsofts’ CLI program help text hasn’t changed since MS-DOS days still.

If you prefer a more friendly looking help desk, check out the TechNet article – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753525%28WS.10%29.aspx

[JonusC]

@DMikeM wrote:

I do know that what I am asking is in fact dangerous but I do have good full time firewalls on our network […]

Then you should also already know that a Server/Router-Side Firewall is completely useless in the most severe, critical cost infections, such as Windows exploits and Rootkit infection; you need those client-side policies for that – but if you’re running Server 2008 R2 and the Clients are Windows 7, that’s a breeze. Of course third party corporate Firewall networks are also great, from my experience I find McAfee to still be the best after so many years – followed by the relatively new Sophos. Symantec is somewhat poor and difficult to manage… but I’m sure you know what I mean and have that all under control 😉

@DMikeM wrote:

Some programs do not run as expected:
Nero
RipIt4Me
PowerDesk Pro
ACDSee
Image Burn
Hawke ChairGun Pro

Nero 9 and ACDSee Pro Photo Manager 9.1 run 100% fine on my machine.

@DMikeM wrote:

Some issues are as minor as the system will not allow me to save a database file in the program directory or make changes to the existing ones, even with “Run as Admin” used. I have taken possession of these folders and been able to move along but I would like to just be able to do as I want with out needing to make these changes for random applications.

That doesn’t make any sense. Well for starters, you may as well disable UAC completely and stick with the XP-days recommendations of group security; to assign your staff members accounts on their workstation to the ‘Limited’ or at most ‘Power User’ account groups. Then, it’s safe to leave the Owner of any program folder as Administrator – just make the permissions changes via Administrative Command Prompt (will have Administrator: in the title bar). CD to the directory and run this command:

icacls *.* /grant USERNAME:F /inheritance:e /T /C /Q

…replacing USERNAME with the username of the Limited/Power User account you want to give Full Access to the folder contents to. You might need to substitute *.* with “C:Program FilesPath To Program” for some dodgy legacy programs that test it’s parent folder for write access instead of a specific file within the folder. A rundown of that commandline is to grant all files and folders in current directory/subdirectories (/T – recursively) FULL permissions to USERNAME, do not abort on errors but still echo them (/C), and hide all success messages (/Q). Alternatively add a pipe command to the end, eg:

icacls *.* /grant USERNAME:F /inheritance:e /T /C /Q > C:PermsLog.txt

incase you overflow the screen buffer in the NTVDM Console with too many errors (highly recommended if you do it to, say, the root of C, there will be lots).

With that done and UAC turned off, you should be able to run everything – as long as it doesn’t try to write data to the Local Registry Hive (Not Current User Hive) or modify/add files to protected folders (C:Windows). In which case you will need to check the “Run as administrator” box in the Compatibility tab for the EXE properties. While you’re at it, fiddle with the OS compat. options – I had to set Nero 9’s installation to Vista SP2 in order to get it past the initial OS check tantrum 😉

OK, that’s it. I have no idea how much you already knew of that, sorry if I’m not telling you much new – it wasn’t my intention to patronize anyone 😆

P.S. Taking Ownership of C:Windowssystem32 and many other folder paths away from TrustedInstaller will create an unstable system. Taking ownership of C:Boot or C:System Volume Information will create an unbootable system. Taking Ownership of system files never has to be done for compatibility purposes; Granting Full Permissions and Running as Administrator without UAC is literally the best you can get (that is the same behaviour as Windows XP). You only need to use Take Ownership if you (a) have multiple partitions, reinstall Windows on the systemdrive and realize that the Home/User partition has invalid SID’s (The owner is a user that doesnt exist anymore) or (b) You want to resource hack the Windows DLL’s to e.g. make the blue Aero ring thingy red instead of blue 😛

Hope any of that helped in some way. Let us know what you find.

[JonusC]

Yeah, i’m on Windows 7 myself – I don’t have time to experiment with R2 these days, but if I did I definately would be. The main let down was indeed missing Superfetch, and I spent days trying to bring it over from Win7. But I gave up…

Yeah, we keep bumping this handy thread too so I won’t complain 😆 We may be off topic, but yes as you said – it’s fair useful and on-topic knowledge/conversations.

[JonusC]

Yeah. I need a CPU, 5000+ X2 here. Slight OC to bring the RAM from 400 to 533 @ 2.2v (EPP Spec).

We’ve probably filled at least a page with off-topic chatter…

😆

[JonusC]

I noticed you only have 2GB of RAM. That explains it. When I finally got another 2GB 5-5-5-12 DDR1066 kit to bring it up to 4GB, the speed increase was phenominal.

[JonusC]

I have about 20 tabs open in Firefox right now; most are forums, message boards or simple blogs, although three are Facebook and two are YouTube, and my Commit Charge for Firefox after sitting here for 5 minutes hops around 171,828KB to 181,304KB.

For IE8, hmm… lets both do a test. I started it fresh, on the first tab I went straight to youtube.com. I opened a second tab and went to bigpond.com.au – a great example of a bulky, poorly coded, resource hungry page. The page source alone is nearly half a meg in total.

You probably already know, IE8 does things differently to Firefox – each tab is a seperate process (makes IE8 excel on quad cores and higher), and then ‘core engine’ stuff (like Flash 10 and JS engine for example) is it’s own process again. So with two tabs open, I have three iexplore.exe *32 processes in TaskMan. I refreshed both pages simultaneously (as quick as I could anyway) and then let it sit active in the foreground on the second bigpond.com tab for 60 seconds, then screenshotted TaskMan.

Results:
[attachment=0:3n4ln968]TaskMan_IE8.png[/attachment:3n4ln968]
[Note that the java.exe below it is unrelated, I have jDownloader running – a Java based Download Manager]

Conclusion:
Along with Internet Explorer’s JavaScript interpreter still being among the slowest of all browsers [Offtopic]], IE8 is still a massive resource whore. But at least it supports Hardware Acceleration via WDDM – Firefox crawls to a standstill when you’re viewing PNG-sprite-heavy CSS2.1-rich webpages, IE8 however still scrolls and switches tabs like a dream.

[JonusC]

You are not running it as administrator. The title bar of the Command Prompt is supposed to have the text ‘Administrator: C:WindowsSysWOW64cmd.exe’.

Try right-clicking the install.cmd file and choosing Run as Administrator from Windows Explorer instead of PowerDesk. If it still doesn’t work, then something more serious is borked. Enable the Administrator account in User Manager; login to it, disable UAC for that account, and run install.cmd there.

[JonusC]

Lol… not sure, I never have that column visible in Task Manager. From what I remember, Commit Size is a bad way to rate memory usage because it just shows what the size of the current Pool block Windows has allocated to it, rather than how much it’s actually using…? Can’t remember. But the Private Working Set actually shows how much is physicially in use, minus the caching and swap overhead, without rounding it up to the next pool block limit. Something like that. I need to find a page which describes in detail what all the seven or so (!?!?) different columns for ‘Memory’ mean.

[Author]

Posts