Hi! Hope you can all help out the green newby here.

I can't figure out how to get the standard windows games installed on Win 2008 Server R2.
I installed
1. asciiwolf's package "games_explorer.7z"
2. "gameux.7z"
3. "xinput.zip"

I copied the games folder from my Win7 32 bit computer to my Win 2008 Server R2 computer.
The games folder is here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games

But the games will not start. They don't appear in the Games Explorer, nor can I start any of them by clicking on the executable.

I really just need to get Solataire going for my old mom.... its a thing she really enjoys.

Can anyone give me step-by-step instructions on how to do this?

Few problems.

You can't just directly copy a installation folder from a source computer to another computer and expect the game to work. There are other dependencies such as registry settings, Application Data, etc that you might have missed which is causing the game not to load. Also, R2 is 64-bit only and you are copying Programs from a 32-bit installation so you could run into a compatibility issue with that. Are you getting a "The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you are running." error?

I am not able to get this to work. I followed all the instructions, ran the installer, did the game copy thing, etc... but when I try to execute any of the games nothing happens. No errors, nothing.

Ideas?

Sounds like the symptoms of the known issue mentioned in the main topic. Make sure you copy the files from a x64 edition of Windows 7. If you don't have Windows 7 x64 installed, you can also use the Windows 7 x64 iso or DVD to get the files. Search the forum for "install.wim" to see how to do this.

Good luck!

After following the instructions (and copying from a Windows 7 64-bit system) I found that the games would still not start. Copying system32\esrb.rs from the Windows 7 system to the 2008r2 server system fixed the problem and the games now play.

There's another workaround to get the games installed easily, but you need the xinput9_1_0.dll file after you do this workaround: first download the attached file I uploaded on Mediafire (includes the xinput9_1_0.dll file and installation), Unzip/extract the file I uploaded to your Desktop, open the program called R2ConvGUI.exe (yes, this works with the 64-bit version as well), go to the Packs tab, tick the following boxes: Games Explorer and Windows 7 Games, click on Apply Selected Items. An error might occur (1 to 2 chance), but click OK, and click Reboot after the installation, just in case, or reboot later on. Then, go to the xinput directory/folder, double-click on install.bat (opens in Windows PowerShell) and hit any key to install the xinput9_1_0.dll file (works for both x86 and x64 versions of Windows Server 2008 R2) and hit any key to exit. After that, restart your server/machine for better results.