Any fix for enabling SLi in Server 2003?

codecx · Apr 24, 2008, 11:51 AM

I sent this email out to Omega Drivers, haven't heard back yet. Just thought I'd post here to see if anyone has an answer or work-around..? Or even experiences of your own to share.

Thanks in advance!
=======================
Sent: April-20-08 9:11 PM
To: 'omega@omegadrivers.net'
Subject: enabling SLi - windows 2003

Hi there,

I’m an avid fan of your drivers.. Whenever there is an old PC whose driver I cannot find, I’ve always found the solution here.

So, I am wondering if you might be able to figure something out for me.
I’ve recently upgraded my PC and I’ve decided to do SLi. Pretty neat, cept I also decided to buy 8gb of RAM, so my OS choices are limited..as most cannot handle more than 3.

So, after a lot of research, I found 2 solutions..

Windows Server 2003 RC2 32bit (Enterprise edition)—Which would use the regular XP driver.
Windows Server 2008 32bit (Enterprise edition)—Which would use the regular Vista32 driver.

Pro: Both Enterprise editions are 32bit, so they use all the drivers and software I am used to, but they are able to have up to 32gb of addressable memory. Awesome.

Con:
Last forceware driver that supported SLi in 2003, was 93.71. After that, nVidia purposely built something into the driver package that did a check for whether or not the OS was XP or 2003 and crippled the SLi if it detected 2003. They said they did this because it was unsupported and never intended to be used in a server product.. I personally think that a Quadro GFX card would go in a server OS..and would make use of an SLi card, but whatever.

There have been jury rigged solutions to get it to work. One involving a tool called ntTweak which allows you to change a value somewhere in the OS to trick it to thinking it is XP. You lose all RAM above 3gb, but it is just temporary.. You install the regular nvidia driver, reboot, enable SLi and then use NTTweak to switch the OS back to 2003 to get all the RAM back...and SLi hopefully sticks as well.

Simple but it does not always work. Many errors can happen and also, you run a high risk of bluescreening the OS with HIVE corruption. It is messy.

SO, I put that as a plan “B” and went for Windows Server 2008 32bit.

Pro:
DirectX10, SLi ready using Vista32 driver, sees all my memory. Great!

Con:
Game compatibility = trash. Complete and utterly useless.
Some newer games, or ones that have been programmed properly, work great. Crysis is beautiful, I’ve been able to have good luck out of other UbiSoft titles as well. Halflife and Portal are OK, little glitchy.

Ironically, Microsoft Games seems to be the worst..
Lost Planet, Assassins Creed & Halo2 is buggy are best.. All heralded as being “Built for Vista” games.
Rise of Nations, Fable, Age of Empires (1-3) Call of Duty (1-3)...and the list goes on... all have 'known issues' with any “Longhorn based OS”

Even my video codec package (CCCP) crap out and bluescreen randomly.. Ridiculous. How anyone gets anything done in this OS, is beyond me!

My collection is limited, but I don’t want to be left with an OS which obsoletes half of it!...yet! :P I mean, my system can handle this.. it should be able to handle it without a problem, yet.. oddly enough, it is just not happening.

So, after a long contemplation, I decided to look on your site to see if there was a way to contact you.

What are my options?

Using the driver 93.71, released in Nov 2006.. It apparently only supports up to 7950 GX2’s.
I know that you are able to use old pieces of drivers to fix problems in newer drivers.. I don’t know if there’s a way to somehow blend the Windows XP 93.71 forceware driver, and fuse it to make it work with my 8800’s..?

Ideally, the issue is all over the internet, no solution exists.. so I am looking for any kind of insight

Wanna be a hero?

Look forward in hearing from you soon!

fps_dean · May 9, 2008, 07:58 AM

There is still an application limit of 2gb however, so only large scale applications such as Oracle will use more than that.

If you find a fix to enable SLI in 2003 let me know, I am looking for the same thing.

codecx · May 9, 2008, 10:03 AM

I think that limitation is per-app though. If I don't run a page file, I've gotten my mem usage up to 5gb before, running a game like crysis, with steam, msn, outlook etc all open in the background.

But I digress. I did get it working , althought it was painful...and not perfected... But I'll explain it the short way and give you some extended info afterwards.

First, you need a copy of Server 2003, (Enterprise Edition if you want more than 4gb of RAM) You need a specific copy, that does not require a key on its initial install. If you use a version of server that required you to put in a key on the install, the change listed below, will not recognize the key and tell you to reinstall. Keep reading, you'll understand.
Once 2003 is installed, you need to setup a new user account and add it to the Administrators group. You also need to enable full hardware acceleration in dxdiag and in the Display Properties -> advanced -> Troubleshooting tab... Reboot.

Next, you a program called TweakNT 1.21. This is a funny little program that allows you to alter your windows configuration, giving you the ability to change a server OS to a client OS of the same type.

So, what you are going to do, is change your 2003 Enterprise Install and convert it to Windows XP Home. DO NOT DO XP PRO. PRO will almost always result in a BSOD. Its a waste of time.
When the PC reboots, it will be in XP home. Login with the user account that you created. In XP Home the Admin account is disabled by default.
Now you may install the latest video driver of choice. Reboot to have it go into effect, enable SLi and reboot once more for good measure.

After a few successful reboots, open up TweakNT again and switch back to Server Enterprise Edition.
Install the rest of your drivers.

Go online and download a program called nHancer, this will allow you to see if SLI is enabled or not. There are two things that will tell you if you've done it.

#1 it will say in big green letters "SLI Enabled"
#2 you will have tabs that pertain to SLi settings. Everything will be grayed out, but on a system that does not have SLi enabled, they are missing.

Ideally, thats all you need to do to get it working.

Now onto the problems you may encounter:

#1 Unless you own a legit copy of server 2003, chances are you are using a free 180 day trial edition from Microsoft, as thats the only copy that I know of, that does not require a ket on the initial install. So, you have to find a way to disable the timer. (Or ..at least I do... haha) My only work around right now is to image the PC on day 1 of 180 and ghost it whenever I run out of time. That will be my plan for the next 6 months at least.

#2 system instability. If anything goes wrong between reboots, you are creating a huge chance of failure once server is back up and running. I've explained the correct steps to take, but to get those, I ended up formatting about 17 times that weekend. I found that my ststem sometimes crashed, and that would cause problems anywhere from the windows installer service corrupting (So, can't install anything) to DirectX corruption., permanently disabling direct draw (no gaming for me!)

#3 Omega Drivers seemed to have more of a problem than the nvidia ones (Boo!!) Most of my formats were due to using it, as it was my ideal choice.

#4 its borderline piracy/hacking. Be warned. There will be blood on your hands after doing this.... can you live with yourself?

Thats about it.

The benefits of this are the stability of an XP OS and the optimized usage of Server 2003. I've been able to get Crysis running at 1280x1024, no AA, and all settings high, and get 55-70fps. It plays much smoother in DX9 than DX10. Older games seem to work OK, Fable, which is usually vey buggy, looks/plays beautifully.
GTA: SA doesn't seem to like my PC.. the textures are all gross. But all other titles seem to play great!

Good luck and have fun!

RSOblivion · May 10, 2008, 09:11 PM

If you want a stable Server 2003 Enterprise Edition just search for eXPerience...

You may find what you need

Will be trying out this method this weekend to confirm it works. After running Server 2003 for the last year having to go back to XP is like getting all your teeth pulled at once :S

codecx · May 11, 2008, 07:56 PM

Awesome. Best of luck and feel free to PM me if you have any difficulties.. Looking forward to hearing your results here!

RSOblivion · Jun 2, 2008, 07:11 AM

Well a little longer than just the weekend but I did manage to test it. Unfortunately seeing as I was using the eXPerience version of Server 2003 it didn't like TweakNT. And it crashed immediately on startup

However it came with a tool to basically make it think its XP. So after trying that SLI worked fine. This also confirms its just a reg key change away from Server as only the ID of Server is changed (changes to OEMBIOS and WINLOGON) as its the latest Corp version rather than the normal one (this one can't use TweakNT anyway

)

SLI worked remarkably well too, until my RAM hit the wall and I was reduced to painful Pagefile chugging.

Ah well new computer later and now my SLI needs are redundant as my new mobo is CrossfireX. Off to get CrossfireX QUAD

codecx · Jun 2, 2008, 10:56 AM

Update for myself.

I was working on a clients PC, and it had a nasty trojan that I couldn't shake, so I did some research and decided to try another brand of antivirus. I decided on ESET Nod32.. It worked pretty good and it was a fairly vocal antivirus so he liked to see that it was working.

At the same time, my 2003 suffered a driver corruption that I had to reinstall the 2003 OS from.. I tried your eXPerience with a similar result (BSOD) and just used my regular method...But for some reason, my older games stopped working. So, I thought I might as well try to see what happened with Server 2008... Same problem.

So, my friend suggested.. Dude, just install Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and if you wanna do the older games, just do a vmware session. I got the power, so I figured 'hey might as well try'.

I switched to Vista 64 and well.. I didn't have a x64 antivirus, so i thought.. Hey why not try this ESET myself..

Installed it, did the windows updates and critical program files.. moved onto reinstalling my games... and fired up Rise of Nations..--Crashed.

But, interestingly enough the NOD32 reported that a tmp file was being created and saw it as viral..... I added it to the exceptions list and BAM! Rise of Nations booted up properly.

Shocked, I tried the same thing with other titles.. all of my games work... As I stated before, I got 8gb of RAM but Vista only uses 2.53 of it @ the desktop, so I got lots to spare. I can't really run any codec packs but VLC seems to play anything I throw at it, so I'm fine. I've had problems with sharing out my printer to my 32bit clients on my network but.. its just my wife who needs the printer anyhow. I told her to just hook the USB up to her PC if she wants to print. LOL

Everything else seems to be running stable, so.. I think I'm going to stick with this. It will be an adjustment but it makes me happy to think that I am running in a more native mode for my hardware.

RSOblivion · Jun 2, 2008, 08:32 PM

Lol go back to Server 2008 and you'll find it a more stable version of Vista without all the DRM crap.

Also with the eXPerience one make sure you get the 50 in 1 Ultra DVD. Its the latest one for all the OS's apart from TinyXP which was just released as Rev 09. If you want SLI in Server 2003 just use the conversion to XP and make sure you have updates turned off (like they are needed anyway!).

I take it you were using NOD32 v3 rather than 2.7. Personally I don't like 3 very much (gets in the way as you noticed) I still run 2.7 and can't fault it. Even works fine on Server 2008. I really would recommend getting Server 2008 over Vista though.