Running Windows Server on my laptop
A long overdue update that I’ve been meaning to post for a few weeks. I was lucky enough to get a new laptop (Lenovo W510) a little while ago and as I was going to completely rebuild it I thought I’d try running Windows Server 2008 R2 natively on it, as my primary OS.
Why?
I want to be able to run a full TFS instance on my laptop (for demonstration purposes). If I was content with TFS Basic configuration then I can stick with Windows 7, but I wouldn’t be able to show the reporting and dashboard capabilities. So, I could install both SQL Server and SharePoint onto Windows 7, but the TFS won’t allow a full configuration on a client OS. I thought about a virtual machine running the TFS Server in Windows Server 2008 R2, but it would need to be 64 bit and Windows 7 (32 or 64 bit) can’t run a 64 bit virtual machine. So I was left with one choice – Windows Server as my OS. My last option was to boot from VHD but my primary drive has to be BitLocker encrypted (corporate policy) and I can’t get a VHD boot to work from my secondary drive.
Why not?
I’ve been a little bit hesitant about installing Windows Server on my laptop, and I’ve tried to rationalise my (largely unfounded) concerns:
- Too heavy weight.
- Lose normal laptop capabilities like sleep and hibernate.
- Not be able to install “consumer” applications such as Zune or other non-server type software.
- Be irritatingly heavyweight around administrative actions including having to specify why I’m shutting my machine down etc..
- Having a boring look and feel.
How?
I followed the steps in some excellent articles which got me up and running very quickly including Keith Combs installing Windows Server on a Lenovo W510:
and a generally excellent summary of how-to’s
https://www.win2008workstation.com
It was a pretty painless process and these resources provided a massive amount of help. There are a few extra things that I made a note of:
- I installed Windows Server via a bootable USB drive. I needed the USB 3.0 drivers for the laptop on the drive, even though I don’t have a USB 3.0 drive. I had a generic installation error stating that drivers were missing and it was these that it was looking for.
- Installing Zune. It refused to install on Windows Server, but this approach worked fine (old article but still relevant).
- Easy Transfer wizard – I wanted to use this to transfer my data from Windows 7 but Windows Server doesn’t include easy transfer. This post solved that one for me.
Summary
I am now happily running Windows Server 2008 R2 on my laptop. In reviewing my general concerns:
- It seems no more resource hungry than Windows 7 on my laptop.
- If you don’t add the Hyper-V role then sleep and hibernate do work normally.
- I did have some issues with installing applications that check for a client OS, but so far I’ve been able to get round the issues.
- Having used the resources highlighted above I have the Aero theme, all UI aspects are identical to Windows 7, the “Why are you shutting down” dialog is disabled and generally you’d have to look very carefully to tell that I am running Windows Server.
Cheers,
Giles