Server Windows 8 & WSE2012 emulation

27 May

Experiment 1: Installing Windows 8 on the server (Mediasmart EX470 in my case)

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=12924&p=94464#p94464
To buy and install Windows 8 on your machine, a previous version of windows (from xp to 7) has to be already installed on the server. In my case I have two computers that are finished (caput!), so I decided to install Vista Ultimate x64 (from one of them) on my EX470.

      I downloaded a burn to iso freeware (BurnAware), and built that iso file first;

 

      Then I had to use “isoavdpcopy.exe” to modify the iso file in order to use “Windows 7

 

      USB DVD Download Tool”

 

    With the Tool I created a USB flashdisk with Vista on it

Well arriving at the server empty system disk to install to, the install program could not see or install to the disk. I went into the machine bios to change parameters, to the web to search solutions, but to no avail.
The solution was to install Vista from within a already installed program. I could install Win 8 Release Preview with no problem, but I think it could be installed from within WHS also (but have not tried it). The sequence was:

      Install Win 8 RP (or any OS that can install on that machine;

 

      Install Vista from within Win 8 (the install was now seeing the system disk and could install on it);

 

      Download the

 Windows 8 

      Ugrade Assistant (if your system is not in accordance with requirements, you are told before buying);

 

    After buying the software it was downloaded with installation options, I decided to download an ISO image, but I could as well install it right away;

Since I wanted a clean install, I had previously removed Vista. No joy, Win 8 could not see my system disk. So I had to reinstall Vista as before, then install Windows 8 Pro within Vista. That went flawlessly, except that, if I recall I had to get the NIC driver for my machine (sys191). When Win8 was installed, the eSata driver was also missing, a Marvell driver download site for the EX470 is linked in my “So you can install WS2012E on the EX470” thread.

That’s it Windows 8 Pro is now installed on my EX470 and can access all the Pools, Spaces, Shares and Files I have done with WSE2012. In fact I have two system disks one with Win 8 the other with WSE2012, and I can swap them at will, and can read, write, modify the data with either system.

Now to build a server…

VJ