Yea so about 5 days ago 3 of my harddrives effectively failed leaving me with just my 200GB one and a bunch of old 20GB ones. Sadly one of them had my windows installation on it, and seeing as I need want more than just a 200GB harddrive. I ordered a 750GB harddrive(on sale). When it finally came I realized I needed to reinstall windows (Forgot that one of the harddrive that died HAD my installation on it... I know i am slow at times!). I was just gonna do XP, but then I remembered my college gives free copies of server 2003 to CE and CS students. I managed to get everything I needed from my college website to install Server 2003.

It installed the same as XP, but it seems to load alittle faster than XP. It accepts all the drivers XP uses and works with nearly all programs XP runs. It actually runs a few older programs I used to have to run in a virtual PC. I am pretty surprized since I expected like 1/2 my programs to not work. I then decided to see if it would actually run games. Seeing as it IS a server OS I had my doubts. I got a few warnings when installing Direct X9C JUN 07 release, but it didnt stop the installation luckily. After DX seemed to be installed and working (DXDIAG let me run the tests) I decided to take Crysis as the first test subject given that it is pretty new. Again, I got a few warnings but it installed fast and flawlessly.

Before I ran it I made sure all system settings relating to the video card were cranked up(Server 2003 has all settings at minimal by default). Once it ran it was alittle jerky at first... But once I actually got to game play it ran smoother than it did on my XP installation. I do not know if its because 2003 is faster than XP or if it was because my harddrives were failing, but it was running a good 10-20FPS faster. Same drivers were used as the XP installation.  While there are many other possible reasons why it ran faster than XP one thing is for sure; it certainly is a viable multimedia and gaming OS. THere are many more programs and games I gotta test before I feel it is 100% safe to say 2003 is a decent XP alternative but so far its going silky smooth

That being said, I recommend anyone here in college check and see if they can get a copy of server 2003 for free. If you can, I strongly suggest you give it a whirl!

Well they were the three in my computer when it got nailed by lightning a while ago. After I replaced all the blown parts I just kept using the hard drives since they still worked. A few months they all started occasionally clicking. While they were clicking windows would generally hang sometimes it would come back to normal, other times it would just freeze completely making me restart my computer. This was going on for a long time. I cant give you an exact date but its probably around 2 years. That being said I am not particularly surprized by them all going out at once.

As I said before; " THere are many more programs and games I gotta test before I feel it is 100% safe to say 2003 is a decent XP alternative"

Usually it is the older programs that end up biting the bullet with newer OS(es). Vista for example will not run 7/10 of my games/programs. That being said I figured it would be good to test older programs first along with a demanding new game. However, as you were suggesting I did test many programs; old and new.

In fact, here is the list so far of programs I tested that worked(in order that I tested them);



Here is a list of programs that DIDNT work(in order that I tested them);



Here is a list of games that work(in order that I tested them);



Games that did NOT work (in order that I tested them);