Installing the Windows Server 2008 R2 RC on a Lenovo ThinkPad T61p

Windows 7 sure got the attention of a lot of you this week, but let’s not forget big brother, Windows Server 2008 R2 also shipped the release candidate.  Considering Hyper-V is a core tool for me and many of you, I was eager to download and install the RC bits on my Lenovo ThinkPad T61p.

The good news is that many of the core drivers you’ll want, install directly from the Windows Server 2008 R2 RC DVD.  These drivers are known as “inbox” drivers.  A couple of drivers will also flow off the update.microsoft.com servers.

There is one notable exception.  The video driver doesn’t install from the DVD and doesn’t flow off the update.microsoft.com servers.  That was a little disappointing because it means you have to do some work to get all of the eye candy.  Heck, even if you have no plans to turn on Aero, you’ll still want the video driver for multimon support.  With all of that in mind, here are the steps I went through in order to establish my new Hyper-V v2.0 demo environment:

1. Install Windows Server 2008 R2.  My machine is connected to my GigE backbone via the T61p ethernet adaptor.
2. From R2, use IE8 to go to https://catalog.update.microsoft.com
3. Install the MU Catalog ActiveX control.
4. Search for “NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M”.
5. Click the Last Update column heading to sort in descending order.
6. The Windows 7 RC driver you want is currently the fourth item in the list.  It’s the driver dated 2/25/2009, version 8.15.11.8171 with a file size of 79.8 MB.  That’s the 64 bit driver you’ll need for R2 and your T61p.  Add it to your basket.
7. Click view basket in the top right portion of your screen under the Search field.
8. Click the download button.  Most likely you’ll need to enable popups for this site.
9. Click the Browse button and pick a folder to download the goods into.
10. Click the Continue button.  Downloading should automatically commence.
11. Click the Close button when the download completes. You are done with this site for now.
12. You’ll notice that a directory named “NVIDIA driver update for NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M (Prerelease - WDDM 1.1)” is created in the folder you specified in step 9 above.  Double click the folder name.
13. Double click the .CAB file in the folder.
14. Select all files.
15. Right mouse the files and extract them to a new folder.  For example, use c:\temp.
16. Run c:\temp\setup.exe
17. Restart after the installation is complete.
18. At this point you have video and ethernet networking.  You could go right to installing the Hyper-V role at this point, but I install some other features first to allow me to do Camtasia screen captures and such.  With that in mind, launch Server Manager.
19. Install the Desktop Experience and Wireless LAN Service features.
20. Restart when prompted.
21. After the reboot and subsequent launch of Server Manager, you should see it report success for the installation of both features.  This is a good time to connect to a wireless network if desired.
22. Start | Admin Tools | Services
23. Start the Themes service and set it to automatic.
24. Right mouse click your desktop and select the Personalize menu item.
25. Click the Windows 7 Aero theme.  This should turn on Aero glass.  However, the machine is set for performance not appearance, so you will want to tweak that for full eye candy.  Assuming of course you want that for a personal Windows Server 2008 R2 install.  You would never do that on a real server.
26. Start | Right mouse click Computer | select Properties.
27. Click Advanced system settings in the top left portion of the screen.  You can also get to this a variety of other ways.
28. Click the Settings button.  I am assuming you are on the Advanced tab at this point.
29. On the Visual Effect tab, click the “Adjust for best appearance” radio button.  This turns on full eye candy and of course takes some of the performance from your system. 
30. Install the Hyper-V role.
31. If you want audio, turn on the Windows Audio service.

Some of you will likely want to install the other banged out drivers and try to make Windows Server 2008 R2 your daily workstation environment.  I have no intention of doing that.  I use Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise for that.  Enjoy your new Hyper-V virtual machine execution environment!!!

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 03, 2009
  Keith, do you experience any of the issues that have plagued the Hyper-V role with Nvidia drivers on 2008 pre-R2 (did you before R2 came out)? http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverhyperv/thread/4e1c53f5-0400-4ca9-8819-f942c10881c1/#page:1 http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/2008/03/08/optimize-performance/ RDP was quite slow for me, but the biggest issue was playing any content in VLC (which I badly need for streaming). I'm currently using the default MS drivers, so no Aero, multimon... for me.

• Anonymous
  May 03, 2009
  Thanks, Keith.  Very useful. I'm not a big fan of doing AERO on my demo server, but the driver will definitely come in handy for making sure my 2-monitor presentation style will work correctly. Cheers, my friend! -K

• Anonymous
  May 03, 2009
  Like I mentioned above, Aero will most likely only be used by people that want to use Windows Server 2008 as their primary production environment because they need the 64 bit guest VM capabilities of Hyper-V.   Robert Larson is a good example.  He runs that way, although I don't know if he uses Aero or not.  Which reminds me, he has a great little tip on his blog at http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/archive/2009/05/02/installing-windows-server-2008-r2-on-a-notebook-and-getting-all-those-required-drivers.aspx.  In that tip he indicates how to get all of the Windows 7 RC drivers to install into Windows Server 2008 R2 RC.  And no, I haven't tested this.  :)

• Anonymous
  June 23, 2009
  I am a project architect consultant and as you would expect I'm on my client's network.  I would expect that some client's would be upset if they saw a new standalone server on their network.  Any comment on this?

• Anonymous
  June 23, 2009
  Why do you need to run server?