I just replaced Windows Vista Ultimate x64 on my laptop with the 64 bit version of Windows Server 2008. What prompted the change? Well, I was hoping to improve the lackluster performance of Vista. I would happily trade in the consumer goodies in Vista for better productivity. Unfortunately it seems to be an either/or proposition. But the most compelling reason for me was Hyper-V, the new virtual server from Microsoft. I do a lot of work with virtual machines, mostly to run a complete Visual Studio Team System environment in a sandbox for development and training purposes. Although Virtual PC 2007 is a good product, Hyper-V seemed to offer better performance and more flexibility with features like snapshots. Hyper-V also supports 64-bit guest operating systems, while Virtual PC 2007 can only run 32 bit OS’s.

After reading this article I was convinced that Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V was the setup for me. So, I took the plunge. In the next blog post, I’ll go over the process of installing Windows Server 2008 as a workstation OS (also dubbed Windows “Workstation” 2008).

By the way, I run a Dell 830 laptop with an Intel Core Duo T7500 mobile CPU and 4GB RAM. If your workstation does not support hardware virtualization, then it won’t run Hyper-V. However, you can enjoy the benefits of Windows “Workstation” 2008 and still run your virts using Virtual PC 2007 SP1. Although Windows Server 2008 is not officially a supported host OS for Virtual PC, it seems to work just fine.

I recently ran into a problem with our new Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 instance running on Windows Server 2008. I'm running Windows Vista x64 on my laptop, which has been working very well. But, when I tried to download a file from this new SharePoint site, the download started OK but then stopped almost immediately, as if the connection was lost.

I did some searching around the web and came across this post. As it turns out Windows Vista can negotiate the TCP packet size with Windows Server 2008 to optimize download speed. Apparently my router (A NetGear FVS318) is throwing a wrench in the works by blocking the SYN packets used to negotiate packet size. Result: no download!

Fortunately the fix is very easy once the  problem has been identified. Just run a Command Prompt as Administrator, and paste this onto the command line:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

That did the trick for me! However, you may want to re-enable auto-tuning when connected to a router that handles SYN packets properly. To re-enable TCP auto-tuning, use this command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal

To see the current TCP settings on your Windows Vista client, use this command:

netsh interface tcp show global