Is Windows Server 2003 on 96 MB possible?

I have an old laptop, a Pentium II with 96 MB.

I have had Windows 2000 on it for ages, it was slow but usable. But now I have to upgrade since I can't get my USB-wlan drivers to install (the old PCMCIA network card broke).

I would prefer to install Windows XP but I have no spare licence, but I do have a Windows Server 2003 licence.

Do you think it's possible (and usable) to squeeze in 2003 on this computer?

Edit:
Unfortunately 2003 simply refuses to install on the laptop. It hangs with an error message (paraphrased)

2003 has detected a problem with your computer and has halted the installation to prevent damage. And then some error codes

This happens very early in the installation while it's copying the installation files just after I accepted the licence.

So I give up for now.

Nifle

Posted 2010-02-27T14:22:16.133

Reputation: 31 337

Answers

Yeah, it's possible. In a cluster computing class a few years ago, we set up 8 computers running Windows XP and one computer running Server 2003, all of them well below their stated minimum RAM requirements. I think server 2003 requires 128 MB of RAM, but we were running on something like 64 or 96 MB. It wasn't zippy, but we were able to get things to run. We had SQL Server loaded on them and did some distributed query processing. It worked well. The Windows XP machines had something like 32 or 64 MB on them.

Nathan DeWitt

Posted 2010-02-27T14:22:16.133

Reputation: 6 029

+1 for reminding people that computers used to have 64 MB of ram. – Ian Boyd – 2010-02-27T15:24:47.213

that was such a fun class... – Nathan DeWitt – 2010-03-01T21:43:24.827

Yes, it is possible to run Windows Server 2003 with only 96 MB RAM, but:

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You'll want to tweak the living daylights out of it, get nLite and strip it to the bare minimum. You may also find Blackviper's service tweak guide helpful.

Here's another tutorial of interest to you:

How to convert your Windows Server 2003 to a Workstation!

Molly7244

Posted 2010-02-27T14:22:16.133

Reputation:

2"How to convert your Windows Server 2003 to a workstation"? Microsoft already did that. They call it Windows XP. – Ian Boyd – 2010-02-27T15:18:04.907

1@Ian Boyd - i think you'll have your time line wrong, windows 2003 server was released 2 years after windows xp. and XP being the desktop variant of win2k3 is a wrong assumption, it's an entirely different OS kernel (not like Windows 7 which is using the very same kernel as Vista). Win2k3 is fact the best OS in terms of speed and reliability made in Redmond as of yet ... by a far cry! it's just the $999 price tag being a real show stopper. :) – None – 2010-02-27T15:25:08.807

And +1 for actually doing it. – Ian Boyd – 2010-02-27T15:25:22.033

@Molly. Larry Osterman's "Why do people think that a server SKU works well as a general purpose operating system?": http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2009/01/08/why-do-people-think-that-a-server-sku-works-well-as-a-general-purpose-operating-system.aspx

– Ian Boyd – 2010-02-27T15:26:44.043

and if you, like the OP, have a spare license, the go for it. – None – 2010-02-27T15:31:23.750

@Ian Boyd - i'm well aware of all the little differences in the default configurations, i'm using 2k3 for years as a workstation OS. – None – 2010-02-27T15:33:16.430

This may be possible, but will be hell for the HD - you're practically promised high paging file activity. – Traveling Tech Guy – 2010-02-27T16:04:38.943

@Traveling Tech Guy - yep, if you want anything resembling a 'user experience', you clone the drive and say 'to hell with antivirus' and the likes, something goes bad, just restore the drive, you really want to keep everything at a bare minimum ... and scratch 'multi' from multi-tasking. :) – None – 2010-02-27T16:25:18.363

Accepting Nathans answer (You lost the coin toss) – Nifle – 2010-02-28T09:03:04.417