Win Server 2019/2016 General questions and discussions

[Quadman]

Question, does win server 2019 work with wifi?  and if so is it easy to set up?  My audio room has no ethernet access so wifi is what i run in my win 10 pro setup.

[Quadman]

@AudioPhil, Thank you.  Loving what 3.0 does to win 10 pro.  Based on your ranking you think 19 server desktop will be a nice improvement in sound?  One last question what is this about CAL's do you need any for server standard desktop on a single one user PC?

[Quadman]

I got win server 2019 std with desktop experience loaded.  Installed HQPlayer 3.25.4 and roon server. I even got wifi working before AO install.  Loaded AO 3.0 and ran the optimizations.  I installed kernal streaming thinking it may be needed for tidal through Roon server, I said yes to waspi/mmcss, I disabled drivers and services and plug and play.  I did not disable AMD CPU/SATA drivers (thinking since I upsample to DSD512 and have a local HDD for music files that they were needed), I did not disable network services since I need them for tidal streaming (through roon), disabled remote desktop and management.  With ST I enabled auto logon and did a shell replacement of roonserver and HQP.

 

I have not listened to it other than through headphones to verify all works.  What surprised me most was the number of processes, handles and threads are almost identical to what I had with my win 10 pro set up with fidelizer pro (fidelizer is not installed on my server SSD).  Is that right?  I thought server was a much streamlined version of windows.  Now the SQ may be much improved, I won't know until tonight when I fire the system up.  I was surprised the processes are about equal to 10 pro.

 

Overall the server 2019 manual was pretty good, I wish it would have covered more example on some option thou.

 

[Quadman]

@AudioPhil Help.  I am having a hard time activating my 2019 server standard with desktop experience evaluation copy to a retail copy.

 

First I downloaded the eval copy from MS web site, same as your link on a second windows PC.  I then used rufus to make a bootable USB with this image.  I then used a clean SSD drive in my dedicated Audio PC, inserted the USB and started the PC, changed boot order to USB and it booted fine and installed exactly as you would expect.  I then installed my drivers, made sure no yellow signs in DM, installed HQP and Roonserver and got my wifi working.  I then installed AO3, activated it, it used the same hardware ID as my 10pro set up and the same activation key worked.  I then set up auto logon and then ran AO and I listened to music all last night it is better than 10 pro but not night and day.

 

Today I tried activating I searched the web and found best way to do it.  DISM get target in administrator command prompt and then change target.  Well I get this error and here is the DISM log

 

It looks like I don't have a valid windows system image??  WTF????

 

So I go into settings and check about system and I see this below and then check activation and see this below.

 

 

 

 

 

So it looks okay there but through command prompt and DISM it doesn't like something.  Any ideas what to do?

 

Thanks

 

[Quadman]

14 hours ago, AudioPhil said:

Sorry, I have never seen this error before. You might try using the "change product key" button and just enter your retail key, this should work as well.

 

I decided to do another clean install.  Downloaded new ISO used rufus to make bootable USB, this time it took over 15 minutes to make USB whereas before it was less than one minute.  Installed server 19 and was able to convert to retail with the key I bought so all is good.  For some reason rufus didn't complete the process for first attempt although it installed and looked fine, but when I tried converting to retail version DISM didn't like the image.

 

 

[Quadman]

7 hours ago, AudioPhil said:

use the Windows Media Creation Tool or Windows 7 USB Tool to create your usb stick instead.

I googled using media creation tool with server and got no hits or mentions of it working, I found manual script methods and of course rufus was suggested a lot.

 

Anyway with server 19 w GUI and AO3 and AFpro8.4 the sound took another positive step forward. More transparent, more dynamic, more there, more jump.  So much presence and stage width, dept and height was more pronounced.  Nicely done Phil.