I have access to Dreamspark from my night school, however i have moved on from 2003 to 2008. I still have the product key for server 2003 that I've used with VMware. I'm not planning on persuing an MCSE (I have MCSA and MCDST), but instead pursuing MCTS and MCITP. I'd like to put that free copy of Server 2003 to use, since I could use an extra copy of XP. I have a laptop that I'm using to pretty much only run Firefox and Open Office Writer. I know server 2003 can connect via wireless and run both applications. Why wouldn't I replace the installation of XP on the laptop with Server, and then put the copy of XP back on the desktop that i took it from? I could really use that copy of XP on an older desktop that is too old for Windows 7, and I know the laptop performs poorly with Vista 32 home premium (haven't tried 7 on it) as it only has 1gb of RAM. I understand that there are some features for workstations found in XP that aren't available in Server, but I'm unsure what they are aside from the enhanced display features that were analogous to Aero whose name I can't remember and the inclusion of games, I can't recall what they were. So, why wouldn't I want to use this plan of installing server 2003 on the laptop and using it for web browsing and word processing, while putting XP back on my old 1ghz system with 512mb of RAM and using it for my older games and web surfing? I had to revert it to Windows 98SE in order to free up the XP product key, and Firefox 2.0.20 is not cutting it anymore. Part of the problem is that some of the things I've asking about I was taught years ago and it is the old "use it or lose it" adage. These issues don't come up every day.

Assuming you've worked out the licensing, there should be no technical reason based on your requirements. I have occasionally run into apps that don't like 2003 and only want XP , but those would be few and far between. You'd be missing some "fun" features like games and media editing, but should surf the web and edit docs just fine. My $.02 C Shane Cribbs http://www.georgiatechnologies.com

One very real obstacle to installing a server O/S on a non-server (in your case, the laptop) is hardware drivers. The laptop manufacturer is highly unlikely to supply drivers for Server 2003. In most cases, the XP drivers will work, but beware! As I say, most drivers from XP will work, but things like USB wireless adapters, bluetooth adapters, 3G adapters, and various other consumer perpherals may not work with Server 2003. Sometimes the driver installation packages will detect the O/S beforehand, and fail with an "Unsupported operating system" error.

I suppose I could try overwriting Vista with a dual boot first to verify the drivers. Is there something with licensing from DreamSpark that would be against installing it on my laptop even if I'm no longer using it as a server? Although it will be ironic, since I'll be using XP as a file/print server and connecting to it with server 2003 as a client. As for "games and media editing", I know that Server lacks Solitaire, which I can also easily fix since I know that on a dual boot setup I had in school with XP(C)/2003(D) I could play Solitaire just by going to start->run c:\windows\ What games capability do I lose? I thought it was possible to install DirectX 9.0c on server should I find I wish to play a game like Neverwinter Nights or Knights of the Old Republic. The laptop is close to 5 years old and was never intended for gaming, so I wouldn't even try to install something more modern. If you mean Solitaire or Pinball, it's easy enough to copy the files onto the laptop. I already have them on a flash drive to get around the fact that they have been removed at the night school. As for media editing, I've never done anything on it that can't be done with Paint or Open Office Draw. I have all the XP drivers for the laptop. I used them to install XP in the first place. The laptop came with Vista 32 Home Premium, but the performance was horrible. The performance improvement I experienced by upgrading to Windows XP Professional was so noticeable to the naked eye it's not even funny. At times the performance doubled, the constant hard disk grinding and slowdowns disappeared.

You can copy Solitaire from an XP machine to your Windows 2003 one. Look for sol.exe, and copy it! But as for webcam drivers etc, I'd check it out first.

I don't have a webcam or bluetooth (there's a switch to turn it on and off, but it's not showing up in either device manager or the Acer hardware detector program I downloaded from the manufacturer on either Vista or XP), and the only USB devices I use with the laptop are a mouse and a Sandisk cruzer flash drive. The wireless is built-in, I forgot which one it is and I'll have to boot up the laptop to check. I have XP and Vista drivers for it, so that's the only potential problem then. That, and the wired connection. For some reason both types of NICs (why do I still call them NICs when they are built-in to the laptop) required drivers.

I tried using Server 2008 as a 'Desktop O/S' on my Delll tower, but it was impractical because I use a 3G dongle to connect to the internet, and this simply wouldn't install on 2008. It just kept rolling back, right at the end. When I speak of devices, in a laptop, I'm including sound card, NiC, camera, USB ports etc. These may be built-in to the m/b but they still need drivers. Please note that 2003 is of the 'XP family', and so the drivers most likely to work are the XP ones. It's a pity you don't have an empty partition, that you could do a test install, and just see what you're up against (if anything). And yes, correctly speaking, they should be callled "Network Adapters", not NIC's, although this has become common usage. PS: The Sandisk cruzer will work. I have actually tried this!

I do have to partitions. The C partition has the preinstalled Vista Home Premium, although I never fixed the bootloader. The D Drive has XP. Maybe I can shrink 5gb off of my XP partition to do a test install. I'm pretty sure I can install server with only 4gb of space, so I'll do 5 to be safe. I know it can be done with only 10. Then when I'm done maybe I can extend it back. I have plenty of free space on the unused Vista partition, but I can't get the darn thing to let me shrink it any more than it already is, and I'm afraid to try gparted on Linux in order to reclaim the extra space. If you have any advice on that last pargraph, could you reply to this thread? http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-windows_install/how-to-shirnk-a-volume-with-30gb-free-space/a06b0917-9a82-e011-9b4b-68b599b31bf5 http://www.thewinforums.com/threads/53841-Need-help-shrinking-a-60gb-volume-with-30gb-of-free-space

For testing purposes, I think 2003 will install onto a 5GB partition no problem. In fact the official "Disk space for setup" minimum requirement is 1.5GB.