OS and Software > Microsoft Help > [Other] How to get Wind2008R2 onto an older machine

[Other] How to get Wind2008R2 onto an older machine

That "boot image" stuff sounds like obsolete floppy-emulation nonsense, which hasn't been needed for ages. I doubt whether you need it, but if you did, what you'd need would be images of a Windows 2008 R2 installation floppy disk, which probably doesn't exist. Rule of thumb: if you can't boot optical media natively rather than under floppy emulation, you probably can't run Windows 2008 anyway.

The Windows 2008 DVD *is* bootable.

You just need to burn the .ISO to a DVD using anything that can do that. Failing anything else, grab 'dvdburn' from Microsoft.

»www.microsoft.com/download/en/de···id=17657

reply to Anav
Okay thanks Dave.
Do you think I need to burn the image to a CD vice DVD if the bios says it only recognizes hard drives and cdroms..... (its a phoenix bios made for dell vers 1.03 running on a dimension 9200 or xps410 model.

I think (but do not know) that the BIOS doesn't need to know about any difference between CD ROMs and DVDs.

Isn't the Win2008 disc too big for CD anyway? I think it is: I don't have a 2008 disc handy, but I found a Win2003 kit that came on 2 CDs. If you've got one ISO, it'll need to go on one disc, and that disc had better be large enough.

reply to Anav
Yes, not there at the moment but I think it was 2.7gigs or something.

If you have a DVD reader in the system, it should work. If you burn the ISO using something like IMGburn, it will be bootable. Don't try to extract the ISO to a folder and then burn the folder to a disc.

The computer probably has no idea what a DVD drive is, but it generally doesn't care. CD-Rom in older computer just refers to the 'optical' drive.

Now the biggest problem you'll have is 2008R2 is 64-bit only. You need to see if the processors / MB in that older system are 64-bit capable, otherwise the newest you can go to is 2003R2

Good point on the 64-bitness.

reply to Anav
Yes its 64bit capable
Intel P965 Express Chipset
and says its a 2.13 Ghz something and 64 bit. Its 2mb ram machine which i can upgrade to 4mb each 1gig stick for about $40.

Just for edification purposes, there is an x86 version of windows server 2008R2 sp2, but for example MS lync Server only comes in a 64bit version.

reply to Anav
Some progress the DVDRoms power line was unplugged so the computer was not able to used teh DVD writer unit. I plugged in the DVD ROm and bang the disc is loading the software. I tried to boot to the copy I put ont he hardrive loading from anotehr PC but the consistent error I am seeing is

BOOTMGR not found.

I have a sinking feeling that even after I load this copy onto the hard drive and then try to boot from the hard drive I will get the same above error msg...

(edit: will try this if it happens - »answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind···f9aa9769 OR »support.risualblogs.com/blog/201···-server/ )

I should add on this hardrive I went to paragon partition manager and made sure (added) that this ntfs formatted primary partion was "ACTIVE"
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reply to Anav

reply to Anav
Thanks Diskdrive you are 100% correct. Egads no wonder one can get confused muddling thru their downloads. Well I have successfully loaded w2008serverR2SP1 (x64) so all is good.

Heaven knows why they decided to call it Server 2008 R2 rather than Server 2009. Marketing: dedicated to confusing the customer.

Windows NT Server 6.1 had a better ring to it

reply to dave

reply to Anav
find a better old machine to run Windows 2008 R2 server on. BTW R2 won't run in 32bit its a pure 64bit OS. Only Windows 2008 Server supports 32bit.

A lot of the run of the mill old C2D machines will run Windows 2008 R2 fine if you have enougth RAM and hard drive.