No Guild Wars on server 2003?

I recently switched over to server 2003 (did NOT do the workstation conversion). The speed difference in games is quite stunning, but Guild Wars has an issue with it: it claims I don't have DirectX 8 or higher installed (the exact error message is "Unable to initialize 3D output. Please verify that you have installed DirectX 8 and an updated video driver." The URL it gives me leads to http://www.guildwars.com/support/en-...ationerror.php) I know for sure I do have DirectX installed, as all my other games run just fine. I searched the technician's corner forums for 'server 2003' and just '2003', didn't find a single article.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this?

But do you know its the latest? Try getting the directx updater off the microsoft website, or install a game that requires directx 9.0c.

win2k3 has video acceleration disabled by default
since its not made for gaming, its a server OS
altho u can enable it, do this

rightclick desktop
properties -> settings -> advanced
troubleshooting -> pull the slider all the way to the right

sound used to also be disabled by default in win2k3
idk if this has been changed

hope this helps

DirectX is recent (August 9.0c), hardware acceleration I already fixed, same with sound.

Any other ideas?

You're fooling yourself if you think games run faster on that OS.

Any freshly installed OS will seem a lot snappier than one you've had for a year.

majoho, thank you for your opinion, but I believe it to be wrong. Compared to a fresh install of XP Pro, this install of Server 2003 is loading Half-Life 2 maps around 2 seconds faster. I don't have fantastic equipment (just a stopwatch), but the results were enough to convince me. I never expected to see any FPS improvement, so I wasn't surprised when there was none. The only thing the XP Pro install is beating out the Server 2003 install in is compatibility, a lot of things don't really like installing on a server operating system, or in the case of Guild Wars, running.

start dxdiag , u can run it from the runbox
check D3D directdraw settings and so on
idk what other games u have tried with, but u could be playing games that use OpenGL and not D3D

I already checked all the settings in dxdiag. I've been playing Half-Life 2 and Oblivion, which I highly doubt are OpenGL.

Open Half-Life 2 and go to Options -> Video -> Advanced. What does it say for the Hardware and Software DirectX modes?

What kind of videocard do you have?

The registry settings in server are different (security reasons mostly) and there may be a hotfix or registry edit somewhere on the windows site for this. Really though all you've done is create a machine that is set to process a demand on disk cache/networking over that of winxps application demand, which by default is set to run as a client machine. You can enable the "server" side of xp pro and get the disk perfomance you've got with server minus the services overhead of 2003 (unless you have server side services shut down), the security issues you may have to overide and basic workarounds like this one with games not wanting to work correctly. Although there are some useful services (afp file sharing and the like) with server, you can easily turn an xp pro machine into a server type machine with a few clicks, so running server you're not going to see any improvements (theoritically) as you would running xp in "server" mode. XP *is* server with fancier buttons and easier to work with controls, all which can be turned off and all of which can be set to operate like it's server parent.

I run xp in disk cache mode and it's quite a bit spiffier with disk access, which is prolly the majority of the difference you're seeing in load times.

Anyway, check out the windows site and do a search, more then likely there is a work-around posted.