Vijayshinva Karnure, a IIS, ASP and ASP.NET troubleshooter as well as a consultant for developers and system admins of Microsoft India is so cool! He has published an article on how you, yes, you can turn Microsofts latest Windows Server release into a SUPER FAST workstation complete with Hyper-V (hardware virtualization capabilities). Well he beat me to the punch, and this probably has a lot more merit than the Server 2003 as a Workstation guide that we published here shortly after the release of Server 2008's predecessor, due to the addition of Hyper-V which does not ship -even with Vista Ultimate.
His article begins below.
Windows Server 2008 is the best OS to be released till date from Microsoft's stable. And the moment I got hold of the RTM build I could not resist installing it on my workstation. Due to the nature of my work I always prefer running a Server OS on my main workstation... I have been running Windows 2003 disguised as XP (with all the themes and stuff) all these days.
So here is my tale of how I went about setting up Windows Server 2008 to look and fell like its desktop counterpart Windows Vista.
1. Enable Hardware Virtualization
My workstation is a x64 machine with hardware virtualization capabilities. This means I can run Hyper-V on my machine. Even if your machine's hardware supports virtualization it is most likely not going to be enabled by default. You have to enable it via your BIOS setup.
2. Install the latest Graphics and Audio drivers
Being a server OS Windows 2008 carries with it basic graphics and audio drivers. To utilize the full strength of your hardware ensure you install the latest drivers for both graphics and audio hardware. Only with the proper graphics drivers will you be able to enable the "Aero" experience on Windows 2008.
Link: Continue Reading: Using Windows Server 2008 as a SUPER workstation OS Link: Neowin Forum Discussion - Thanks Chadbr
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