Installation
1. Boot up your Windows Server 2008 dvd. If you see the screen below, choose the approperiate settings and click Next.
2. On the next screen just click the button Install Now.
3. Enter your Windows Server 2008 productkey. If you don’t have one (yet) you can just skip this step by clicking Next and click No when asked when asked if you want to enter your product key.
4. Select the version of Windows Server 2008 that says Full Installation. Don’t select one of the Server Core Installation’s, because then you won’t have a GUI 
5. If you agree to the license terms, select I accept the license terms and click Next.
6. If you have a clean harddisk or if there is no possibility to upgrade from a previous version of Windows you will only have the option Custom (advanced). In this manual I will use the Custom installation.
7. Select the harddisk and partition where you want to install Windows Server 2008 and click Next.
8. Now Windows 2008 Server setup will install the selected version on your harddrive.
9. After the installation has finished the computer will restart and a message about changing your password will be shown. Click OK.
10. You MUST type in a strong password with at least one capital letter and one number, for example P4ssword (capital P/number four), otherwise you will get an error message saying that you doesn’t comply to the security enforcements of the domain. You can disable this strong password enforcement later. After succesfully changing the password you will see the message that your password has succesfully been changed. Click OK. Your desktop will now show up.
11. In the Server Manager window check the Do not show me this console at logon to not show the Server Manager at startup. You can access it later via the the Server Manager shortcut in your quick launch bar or Start menu.
Tags Server 2008 Workstation
March 12th, 2008 at 20:59
it won’t get past the stupid password screen. i just spent an hour trying different combinations. a feckin waste of my day, as now i have to reinstall 03…
Admin: I added the remark to step 10 that you *must* enter a strong password, otherwise you can’t log in!
March 13th, 2008 at 0:32
I’ll try to make it more cleer…
Capitalizing the first letter in your password…..and make sure there are letters and numbers in the password….so that its “complex” enough for microsofts standards.
Good Luck!
March 21st, 2008 at 15:06
i installed it on Parallels for mac….never asked me for a password.
March 25th, 2008 at 6:21
For some reason, I can’t boot from an optical disc when the bios is set to Raid mode. Abit still has not fixed the following bios error (running v. 16 b10):
When attempting to boot from a SATA DVD-RW drive connected to either Intel or JMicron SATA port, bootable optical discs cannot boot when the Intel Raid/IDE/AHCI bios selector is set in Raid mode. Switch back to IDE mode, and the optical disc becomes bootable again.
Anyone else encountered this? I ran into this, when the board was newly released about 9 months ago. A workaround solution is: use the set of (6) WinXP SP2 bootable floppies, in order to install onto a Raid 0 pair of hard drives.
Does MS offer a set of bootable floppies for installing Server 2008 (either: x32 or x64 version?)
April 2nd, 2008 at 23:25
come installare languace pack italian file *.cab
Grazie
April 19th, 2008 at 20:51
@m.oreilly
Like already said by Admin, the following examples (Passw0rd or P4ssword or P4ssw0rd or P@ssw0rd) work fine.
Valorisa
May 9th, 2008 at 16:04
Yes!
It is working fine om my laptop now! Thanks for this great manual!
June 23rd, 2008 at 21:11
Thanks for this guide! I am now tri-booting Windows Server 2008, Mac OS X 10.5, and Ubuntu 8.04 on my MacBook Pro.
June 25th, 2008 at 13:33
It worked like a charm ! thx for the tip this is much better then plain Vista !!
July 16th, 2008 at 8:39
Thanks.
I’m downloading it now.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:18
Just had a look at this. Looks awesome. Will try this if my Win XP x64 fails - and this might be only a few weeks away as i’m willing to destroy it over and over again…..
July 16th, 2008 at 22:53
Gee! It would be nice to have that kind of money to blow for a copy of Windows Server 2008, esp. since I got my Vista for nothing.
July 19th, 2008 at 18:08
There are few different version of 2008 server. What one did you use? Or what would you recommend.
Admin: Here is a topic about the different versions of Windows Server 2008. I am currently using the x64 Enterprise because it’s the most extended version that includes Hyper-V.