I want to upgrade from Me to Server 2003 -how?

[esecallum]

I have a super stable winme and i want to upgrade to windows 2003 -

( i do NOT want to upgrade to xp.i have a xp hard drive which was successfully upgrded from winme to xp and then to nt file system.was not impressed with xp at all.)

ONLY reason is to improve/solve the memory problem with win98/winme which means conventional memory is limited to 2mb no matter how much ram you add.

QUESTION IS HOW WOULD I UPGRADE TO SERVER 3003.

once i have upgraded then i will configure it as a desktop.

what version should i use of server 2003.

remember i want it to have 48 lba large hard drive support.

my winme already has it from the patch by lexx who was banned by some id***.

and of course the server 2003 should be uptodate with service packs.

also has anyone upgraded from winme to server 2003?

were there any issues? how did it work out.IS IT FAST.IS STABLE.IS IT OK?

Edited June 14, 2008 by Tarun
Let's just fix that annoying all caps title to comply with the rules, eh? Ooh yeah that feels much better! :)

[cluberti]

Well, first things first - you can't technically "upgrade" from ME to 2003, as it's not a valid upgrade path. The install would have to be a clean install.

And considering XP and 2003 are the same kernel, performance will be similar (since Server 2003 is lighter and the process quantum and memory management are tweaked differently it might feel a bit faster overall) as will user experience.

The unattended guide has good documentation on Server 2003 as a workstation, and lots of people (including myself) have had good experience with 2003 as a main desktop OS.

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

my winme already has it from the patch by lexx who was banned by some id***.

ok first off, LLXX was banned in early 2007. LET IT GO.

secondly, namecalling is one of the many reasons why they are no longer with us.

as for your question about stability, 2003 is the most stable platform MS has ever built. If your hardware is up to it.

[esecallum]

Well, first things first - you can't technically "upgrade" from ME to 2003, as it's not a valid upgrade path. The install would have to be a clean install.

And considering XP and 2003 are the same kernel, performance will be similar (since Server 2003 is lighter and the process quantum and memory management are tweaked differently it might feel a bit faster overall) as will user experience.

The unattended guide has good documentation on Server 2003 as a workstation, and lots of people (including myself) have had good experience with 2003 as a main desktop OS.

I UPGRADED FROM winme to xp successfully but found it slow and not snappy at all.

[CoffeeFiend]

but found it slow and not snappy at all.

I did run both XP and 2003 on a desktop before. Benchmarks might point out some minor speed differences (<10% likely), but I never saw any speed difference between the two (just plenty of apps that would either not run, or require patching the installers so they would install). XP is plenty fast, unless you have a pretty old PC (especially not enough RAM). If XP is slow (with system restore off, classic theme, unnecessary services disabled and such), 2003 is gonna be slow too. If it's an older PC, you might want to look into win2k, or buying more RAM.

as for your question about stability, 2003 is the most stable platform MS has ever built. If your hardware is up to it.

Drivers come a LOT into play here. With good drivers on quality hardware, both XP and 2003 are plenty stable for 99% of tasks. It's not like one needs five 9's of uptime on their desktop.

Edited June 14, 2008 by crahak

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

as for your question about stability, 2003 is the most stable platform MS has ever built. If your hardware is up to it.

Drivers come a LOT into play here. With good drivers on quality hardware, both XP and 2003 are plenty stable for 99% of tasks. It's not like one needs five 9's of uptime on their desktop.

very true. my experience with 2003 is 'limited' to high end workstation class Servers and rack mounted servers (multi CPU, ECC Ram, etc) designed with the windows server line in mind. I dont recall using 2003 on a standard PC so their may be some problems there i havent seen before.

[cluberti]

I UPGRADED FROM winme to xp successfully but found it slow and not snappy at all.

Well, XP is a valid upgrade path, 2003 is not.

And if XP was sluggish, it wasn't XP - it was drivers or 3rd party software, or you were on a Cyrix or Via CPU . XP on it's own, even on a lower-end P3 with 256MB RAM, is snappy.

[esecallum]

I UPGRADED FROM winme to xp successfully but found it slow and not snappy at all.

Well, XP is a valid upgrade path, 2003 is not.

And if XP was sluggish, it wasn't XP - it was drivers or 3rd party software, or you were on a Cyrix or Via CPU . XP on it's own, even on a lower-end P3 with 256MB RAM, is snappy.

actually amd athlon 3400 2ghz with 1 gb memory. no external add ons.

even after tweaking it was still sluggish slow and like wadding through molasses compared to winme.

the shocking thing was i could run at least 4 cpu multi tasking intensive applications in winme like mpg encoding,p2plike kaza or dc++,bittorrent and web browsing without a problem.

with xp you click and you need to wait a minute for the screen to come up.dreadful os system.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Your basing your opinion on an upgraded XP from the pos ME??? You have no basis to b*tch unless you try a full clean install of XP!

As for 2003 since we are assuming you actually spent the 800 dollars MINIMUM to purchase and use it like said before their is NO way to upgrade and you'll find alot of the apps your used to using on ME will NOT work on 2003 without upgrades.

[eyeball]

Did you try XP pre SP1 by anychance?

[esecallum]

Your basing your opinion on an upgraded XP from the pos ME??? You have no basis to b*tch unless you try a full clean install of XP!

As for 2003 since we are assuming you actually spent the 800 dollars MINIMUM to purchase and use it like said before their is NO way to upgrade and you'll find alot of the apps your used to using on ME will NOT work on 2003 without upgrades.

many win me apps work on xp machine after upgrade.at least 90%.

i have not tested them all as i have 2348 programs on it covering every possible application.

also MANY of the applications are STANDALONE APPLICATIONS.THAT MEANS THEY DON'T WRITE TO THE REGISTRY.

it used sp2.

i have at work a workstation with xp and that too is sluggish even with the applications on a network server.

i resent your assertion that i am b*********.

i assert my right to free speech and demand a decent os from ms.

[CoffeeFiend]

actually amd athlon 3400 2ghz with 1 gb memory. no external add ons.

even after tweaking it was still sluggish slow and like wadding through molasses compared to winme.

Then there's something definitely wrong with your install. I've seen XP work great on older P3's just fine, very snappy. It must be the Win ME leftovers. Clean install is the only way to go IMO. Upgrading an OS pretty much always leads to the kind of problems you're experiencing.

the shocking thing was i could run at least 4 cpu multi tasking intensive applications in winme like mpg encoding,p2plike kaza or dc++,bittorrent and web browsing without a problem.

with xp you click and you need to wait a minute for the screen to come up.dreadful os system.

I've never had such problems, or seen anyone experiencing them. Stuff is just as fast... Especially on a decent machine like that. There's just no reason for it to be so slow.

Hell, even on Vista almost everyday I have encoding jobs running (virtualdubmod + xvid or x264, besweet/lame too -- it hardly gets more demanding than that!) and PLENTY of heavy apps and it's NOWHERE NEAR that slow. I can even watch a HD movie while I'm encoding, and still have plenty of other heavy apps open at the same time (had no problems using XP before either)

XP is definitely a decent OS. It's just your particular install/upgrade that has some issues.

[Tarun]

I agree with others here, if you are going to go with XP (or 2003), format and do a clean install.

[Idontwantspam]

In general, whenever you upgrade rather than doing a full reinstall, you're asking for trouble. This is especially true when switching from the 9x line to the NT line. I would recommend trying a clean install of XP, as XP is much cheaper than Server 2003 (unless you can get it for free, e.g. Server 2003 Standard is free to students under the DreamSpark program). I would highly advise slipstreaming SP3 into an XP disk and installing from that, making sure you have good drivers, and giving XP another try - fresh - before you go for Server 2003.

[specialbao1]

Your computer might be infected with spyware.I also got the same problem but it started after i first time used internet on xp