Windows Server 2008 R2: Who has control?

Last Sunday I started setting up a system for testing some new Microsoft technologies that I am interested in. These are:

• Windows Server 2008 R2
• SQL Server 2008
• Visual Studio 2010

I made a primary partition with 45 GiB on the hard disk that is normally only for data, but it's just a test system that will be removed at some time, so I though it's a good idea to use the faster drive (because the hard drive where my Windows XP and some other operating systems are on, is a not-so-fast PATA drive). I did not want to install it inside a virtual machine because I wanted to know how fast it runs natively. Especially SQL Server and Visual Studio demand a lot of ressources, so I am quite sure this was a good idea.

So, I started installing the operating system - Windows Server 2008 R2. I think in general the installation application is okay so far. When I remembered back in recent Windows clients and servers, the installer told me how long it will approximately need to finish. I have missed this part in the Windows 2008 installer. I have seen that they still haven't removed that poor activation "feature" that makes only problems to people who use Microsoft's software legally (like me) than for those who use illegal copies. If Microsoft thinks that such annoyance helps them increasing their market share, okay. Other operating system vendors think different. Once Windows was up and running, I began to install SQL Server 2008. When I started the setup.exe on the DVD, a message box told me about compatibility problems with my operating system and that I should apply SP 1. But I was a little bit afraid: Will my system still work afterwards? Will it run stable? The message box didn't tell me what could happen. I decided to let it run. As suggested, I installed SP 1 immediately after the SQL Server setup was finished. I tried out SQL Server Management Studio and obviously everything went correct. Then Windows reminded me that new updates for Windows are available. Because I am a good citizen, I let it download and install these updates. Windows wanted to restart and that was okay for me. When it booted up again, there was some message "Configuring updates...". No information on how long it will need, what it really does... Then there appeared a text with a percentage counting up. I still didn't know what Windows does in details, but at least I could estimate how long it will need. When it reached "100%"... no, it did NOT let me log on, it said "Stopping services" and "Shutting down". Then it restarted and the jokes began again. "Configuring updates...", counting up to "100%" and again... reboot! It repeated that procedure three times and all the time there was no information for me what it does or when I will be able to log on again or whatever information that could be useful. Windows just did what it wanted. During that I wondered about the roles of my computer and me. I am used to that I am the master and my computer is my slave. Obviously, Microsoft thinks different about that. If you use Windows, these roles are inverted: Windows does something and you are expected to follow. It is also some kind of behaviour: Just imagine, you want to work with someone together and suddenly this person begins to do something and always says "wait, wait, wait" and you have no idea when you can continue working. Would you like that person? I think it would be a good behaviour of Windows, if it would at least say how many steps it has to complete and how many it has completed already and at least an estimation of how much time this would consume. Then I am able to do something else and are not required to stare at the screen which doesn't tell me much useful.

Next I installed Visual Studio which was no problem. Meanwhile - because staring at the screen is just too boring -, I wanted to watch a video. When I double clicked it in Explorer, I realized that there was no Windows Media Player installed. That's okay I think. Who needs a Media Player on a server anyway? :-) Installing it is easy: I opened an applet in Control Panel that allows me to add Windows features. The feature of choice has the name "Desktop experience", or something like that. It installed Windows Media Player and some other applications and while doing that, it informed me that a restart of Windows would be necessary. What??? I have to restart my operating system because I installed an application? I was wondering. While I was wondering, I opened Firefox and googled for "vlc player", downloaded it, installed it and watched my video.

Unfortunately, it was already late then and I couldn't yet try out the new features, I hope I can do it in the next weeks.