Thinkpad T and Windows 2008 R2

Hi,
I was wondering if any of you have experience installing Windows 2008 R2 on your Thinkpad and could share your findings.

I tried it and was not very happy with the result.

I could not get the Bluetooth to work (it was the only installer that refused to work and claim an OS incompatibility) and there were a few other devices that it did not recognize (not sure what they were as they showed as unknown).
Bluetooth is essential for me, the others did not seem to hurt anything.

The biggest problem that I had however was when I did a "switch user" that the screen would just go black and it would not allow me to select another user. Pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL would briefly show the logon screen but it would go black before any action could be taken, rendering the whole thing unusable.

As there are no W2K R2 specific drivers, but the OS shares the foundation with Windows 7, I installed all the Win 7 drivers from the Lenovo support site in the same order as I did when I did the Win 7 install.

If anyone got past this I would appreciate hearing about it.

Thank you.

 

May I ask you why you would install a >$1k Server OS on a laptop?

 

I cannot speak for LucM, but Windows Server 200X (3,8,8 R2) are all free for me, while the standards Windows versions are not. Also, the Server editions tend to be a bit quicker and more secure. If it is free, why not? Well, LucM's problems may be why not...

LucM: I have not decided yet if I want to bother with it, but if I do have a copy of Windows Server 2008R2 which I might install on my Thinkpad when I receive it. If I do, I will let you know.

Ryan

 

Because I was not a very big fan of Vista, I ran 2008 non-R2 for about six months (and Windows 2003 happily before that as I loathed XP)—before the RC of Windows 7 was available. 2008 ran fine—BETTER than Vista in terms of perceived performance—but it’s really not a notebook OS. While I had zero issues switching users, I had reduced battery life as a result of running a server OS. As for Bluetooth, the reason you are having issues with this under 2008 is because Microsoft pulled the Bluetooth stack from the OS—obvious reason being little usage of Bluetooth in such an environment. As a result, I had to reincorporate the original Bluetooth stack from Vista (I assume you’ll need to use 7’s)—and you might need a little bit of technical acumen if you want to continue down this path. Overall, I found 2008 to be a better Vista, but with 7 being out for a while now, and quite polished, there is little reason for me to put a server OS back on my notebook. However, I do run 2008 in a VM.

FWIW, I found http://www.win2008workstation.com/ to be a great resource when I did this.

 

@measure : Thank you. I will be watching this space for an update.

@TinyRK : For a demo/support environment used in my company it would be good to be able to use the Hyper-V capabilities that W2K R2 offers. I have it all running on a server computer but it is little difficult to take that one on the road
I am using the Virtual PC capabilities of Windows 7 but they are limited to 32-bit installations of XP/Vista (with a limit of 3GB RAM) and one of the applications benefits from a 64-bit environment.
I have access to W2K R2 through Technet so it beats paying for VMWare WorkStation which would give me the capability I am looking for but costs money.

 

Thanks BinkNR. I will be sure to check that site out.

 

Beware with this—Microsoft only supports a limited amount of hardware, and even fewer power states, while running Hyper-V. You will have SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCED BATTERY LIFE, your notebook WILL RUN HOTTER and there are ISSUES WITH MANY VIDEO CARDS under Hyper-V. If I recall correctly, I believe there were also issues with sleep and/or hibernate while Hyper-Ving. Since Hyper-V is quite specialized, Microsoft did not invest many resources in making certain Hyper-V works well with all hardware—and even less time in having a virtualization server be notebook friendly. If you want to do server-class virtualization on a notebook, you’re going to “pay” for it—and the price will be quite high if this is your daily machine.

Then again, things MIGHT have changed with R2, but I doubt it—and I guess you’ll let us know .

 

It's not impossible to install a server based operating system on a laptop as I have tried this before (Windows Server 2008 on Thinkpad R61e). You have to take note that Windows Server 2008 R2 is a pure 64 bit operating system so you must use 64 bit drivers.

Though since it was built on Vista architecture you can get away using Vista/Windows 7 64 bit drivers on some devices. If some installers (msi) refuses to play ball because of OS type, you can on some installers extract the contents from the package and point the missing hardware to the extracted INF drivers and see if that works out.

 

@Hearst555 : Indeed.

@BinkNR : I got things to work properly when I installed the non-switchable driver for the ATI card and setting the BIOS to use that card.
Still no joy with the Thinkpad Bluetooth drivers so I am using wired peripherals again (including plugging in my phone to tether).
So far this is working fine. The battery usage is not much higher then with Windows 7, maye 10 minutes in some informal testing.

In the mean time I also discovered that the VMWare Player, which is free, supports 64bit guest OS's and is using the virtualization components of the processor. It appears to be just as configurable as Hyper-V and (so far) appears to not have more impact on my system then the Microsoft solutions.

On top of this it also supports Aero in the Virtual Machines, so when I now look at, for example, a Virtual Vista machine I see exactly what my customers are seeing. The Microsoft Virtual PC (on Win 7) nor Hyper-V do this.

Maybe I do have to broaden my horizon beyond the Microsoft walls...

 

i've been running the final release of 2008 R2 on both my X61s and thinkstation D10 since MS sent it to me back in october.   it runs fine.

bluetooth isn't supported whatsoever on server OSes.   if you need bluetooth then server 2008 R2 isn't for you.

also, windows media player won't play DVDs without a third-party codec.   normally i wouldn't care but my D10 is the only system i have driving my 30".   after a few days of trying to find a compatible free codec, i wound up buying one from nvidia.

i've run server OSes on my thinkpads since the days of NT4 server so the concept of server OSes on mobile platforms isn't exactly new.   some people do it because they think it's cool.   others do it because they need the features.

my only advice is to try 64-bit windows 7 drivers since they're the only ones you'll find.   out of all my hardware, the only 2008 R2-specific driver i have is from nvidia.   the rest are for win 7 and came from lenovo.