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So I was building a desktop server for my office. I didn't realize that there was a server cartel out there essentially locking out certain hardware. Part of the issue was that I was not really privy to what software we were even going to run on this machine, but at any rate the tower is a z87 mobo with a 4770 CPU and 32 Gb of ram to run quick books for 4 users.

Question being am I SOL as far as getting this to work with windows 2008 or 2013 server??? Is there a way to make it a linux server? I'm probably way out of my depth, some of you will know I actually work in sales at this place and me getting dragged into IT is a bad joke.

Is there a way to use windows 7 as a server? Would that run quick books? Other than that all we do is use it for file storage.

I've been googling around and there is zilch for info on this its sorta the black whole of tech, small scale business technology. Its all going to the cloud.

I just did this last month for my Backup Exec server, installed server 2008r2 on a Z87 setup. Mine was a ASUS Z87-PRO (V EDITION) board, what board do you have?

It took some trial and error, with some simple .ini editing, but I got it all working, let me do some digging.

Edit:
This is where I found how to do this for server 2008 R2: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1770971 also here: https://communities.intel.com/message/138286

For the majority of the drivers I dumped the Asus Driver DVD to my desktop, searched for *.ini and edited each one, one at a time. Find the block that looks like:
WNT_6.1P_32 = Win7_32 ;Business, Enterprise (32 bit)
WNT_6.1P_64 = Win7_64 ;Business, Enterprise (64 bit)
WNT_6.1P_32_MCE = Win7_32 ;Ultimate (32 bit)
WNT_6.1P_64_MCE = Win7_64 ;Ultimate (64 bit)
WNT_6.1H_32_MCE = Win7_32 ;Home Premium (32 bit)
WNT_6.1H_64_MCE = Win7_64 ;Home Premium (64 bit)
WNT_6.1H_32 = Win7_32 ;Home Basic, STARTER (32 bit)
WNT_6.1H_64 = Win7_64 ;Home Basic(64 bit)

And add this line:
WNT_6.1I_64 = Win7_64

Final:
WNT_6.1P_32 = Win7_32 ;Business, Enterprise (32 bit)
WNT_6.1P_64 = Win7_64 ;Business, Enterprise (64 bit)
WNT_6.1P_32_MCE = Win7_32 ;Ultimate (32 bit)
WNT_6.1P_64_MCE = Win7_64 ;Ultimate (64 bit)
WNT_6.1H_32_MCE = Win7_32 ;Home Premium (32 bit)
WNT_6.1H_64_MCE = Win7_64 ;Home Premium (64 bit)
WNT_6.1H_32 = Win7_32 ;Home Basic, STARTER (32 bit)
WNT_6.1H_64 = Win7_64 ;Home Basic(64 bit)
WNT_6.1I_64 = Win7_64


Once I edited every .ini file (took like half an hour) I then burned to a DVD and ran the asus setup. I had to edit and manually install the Intel I217-V the "have disk" way, and the driver that I picked from the list that works is the I217-LM. I use that on board intel nic for my internet port on the server, and I used a I350-T4 card for my iSCSI and mgmt.

I have that DVD sitting right in front of me, so if you want me to save you some time, if it's a similar board, I can upload the entire DVD for you.

I would really appreciate it, how would you like to handle the exchange?

What board do you have?

This one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157371

Asrock Z87 Extreme!

The, "IT" fella... Well he's really our electrical engineer witch makes him technically the most knowledgeable person was looking for .ini files but could only find .inf files.

The mentioned disk is ASUS... your board you linked is ASRock. Not going to work for you.

I've used the ASUS ini trick myself and it works well.

you will have to Google to see if a similar method is out there for ASRock.

For my WHS 2011 machine I had a similar issue.
Install the Windows 7 or Windows Vista drivers one by one until you get it all. All the individual drivers are usually on the disk split out. For me it was the USB 3 drivers that I had to really dig for.
For true peace of mind and lack of bloat record what drivers worked for what and then do it again a second time fresh to have a clean install.

Try going directly to the manufacturer of the chipset. If the chipset is Intel, go to Intel, and if it's Realtek, go to Realtek. They may be more lenient then the drivers from ASRock.

Win7 Pro or Ultimate might work for four users and Quickbooks. Quickbook isn't the most sophisticated program out there, and Win7 supports up to ten connections. Quickbook's multi-user feature is a file on a network share, even on the "enterprise" version. I'm going to stop here because I'll start ranting about crappily written software.

Are there going to be other services running on this box?

You might be able to host the Quickbooks file on a Samba share.* There was something in the documentation about that, but that might have been the "enterprise" version.

*(No guarantee since I haven't tested this, and I get the impression Quickbooks is pretty unstable in general.)

I pm-ed you a link to the drivers.

Since you don't have an asus board you cannot just run the asus installer, but you can drill down to each driver for lan/chipset/raid etc and use some of my drivers.

Quickbooks can run as well on Windows 7 or 8 as it does on server 2008 or 2012. The only thing it needs is the quickbooks file manager (put the Quickbooks CD in and do a server only install) and then point that to where your company files are located.

There is a linux version of this. I would not recommend using it though. I have it running on the server that hosts the company files at work and it has a tendency to suspend itself (which causes all kind of havoc when people try to open the company files).

On a side note the file manager for quickbooks doesn't take much memory. Windows 7 with 2 gigs of ram would likely be enough to host quickbooks files for 4 users. Is this going to do anything other than host the company files? If not you may get more benefit out of moving that extra RAM to other systems.

LaChupacabra wrote:

Quickbooks can run as well on Windows 7 or 8 as it does on server 2008 or 2012. The only thing it needs is the quickbooks file manager (put the Quickbooks CD in and do a server only install) and then point that to where your company files are located.

There is a linux version of this. I would not recommend using it though. I have it running on the server that hosts the company files at work and it has a tendency to suspend itself (which causes all kind of havoc when people try to open the company files).

On a side note the file manager for quickbooks doesn't take much memory. Windows 7 with 2 gigs of ram would likely be enough to host quickbooks files for 4 users. Is this going to do anything other than host the company files? If not you may get more benefit out of moving that extra RAM to other systems.

Thanks for the input. I didn't know any of this.

ColeLT1 wrote:

I pm-ed you a link to the drivers.

Since you don't have an asus board you cannot just run the asus installer, but you can drill down to each driver for lan/chipset/raid etc and use some of my drivers.

Downloading right now. Thanks very much!