Windows Server 2012
Wednesday 5th September, 2012 11:17 Comments: 0
It's finally available to TechNet subscribers. I would have preferred it was made available before then, to give me a chance to play around with the final version before everyone else start to use it (for example, I could test the Nmap setup files, which displayed an error when I tried to install the Visual C++ redistributable on the release candidate); but I imagine Microsoft would argue that the release candidate was close enough that it shouldn't matter. I must admit, so far I haven't spotted any real difference between the two.
I'm still undecided on the new start menu, it shouldn't be a huge problem for a server as it's rare people will need to be logged onto it, but trying to use Remote Desktop with a small touchscreen phone is a bit fiddly (hard to get the cursor to the bottom left corner; the Windows keys is a soft key so I have to bring up the keyboard and tap it twice). I have the same issue accessing a Windows 8 test machine with a touchscreen phone.
Driver support was surprisingly good by the time RTM arrived (I had issues finding them when the RC came out, but newer/better ones are out), although I did have to force the Intel 82579LM driver to get my 82579V integrated gigabit network adapter to work. Intel's drivers appear to be deliberately crippled so they don't support Server 2012, and attempts to modify the inf file are futile as Server 2012 now compares the hash against the catalog file:
"The hash for the file is not present in the specified catalog file. The file is likely corrupt or the victim of tampering."
On the plus side, this is probably a good thing; although it may encourage people to disable driver signing, which would be a bad idea.
I'm still undecided on the new start menu, it shouldn't be a huge problem for a server as it's rare people will need to be logged onto it, but trying to use Remote Desktop with a small touchscreen phone is a bit fiddly (hard to get the cursor to the bottom left corner; the Windows keys is a soft key so I have to bring up the keyboard and tap it twice). I have the same issue accessing a Windows 8 test machine with a touchscreen phone.
Driver support was surprisingly good by the time RTM arrived (I had issues finding them when the RC came out, but newer/better ones are out), although I did have to force the Intel 82579LM driver to get my 82579V integrated gigabit network adapter to work. Intel's drivers appear to be deliberately crippled so they don't support Server 2012, and attempts to modify the inf file are futile as Server 2012 now compares the hash against the catalog file:
"The hash for the file is not present in the specified catalog file. The file is likely corrupt or the victim of tampering."
On the plus side, this is probably a good thing; although it may encourage people to disable driver signing, which would be a bad idea.