How to use Windows 2008 on your laptop
- Follow all the tips from Windows 2008 Workstation site. Microsoft has a KB article also that is useful.
- Get Windows Live Messenger bare MSI from Softpedia (it's a MS-signed installer, worked just fine for me)
- How to get Windows Live Writer on Windows 2008: this was a bit trickier, and involves importing a few registry keys (just copy the registry keys to a .reg file and import it).
- First you need a machine with WLW installed. Copy the entire folder to the new machine. I copied it to %ProgramFiles%\Windows Live\Writer, which is where it'd go if I could run the proper installer.
- The following registry keys are created by the "root" Windows Live installer:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live\installer]
"WLXMarket"="en-us"
"WLXLanguage"="en"
"WLXVersion"="WL20"
- Next the keys for WLW on HKLM (make sure the InstallDir matches the right folder where you copied the binaries):
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live\Writer]
"InstallDir"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Windows Live\\Writer\\"
- Finally, export from your existing WLW installation the entire
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Writer key. That will bring in your current blog accounts and everything :). Make sure to fix any folders that might be different on your target machine (i.e. Documents and Settings, etc.)
- Add a shortcut to the start menu and you're done!
- Finally, forget about sleeping/hibernating your computer from the start menu:
Even though sleep and hibernation are supported, you have to Ctrl+Alt+Del and choose the respective option which now DOES show up in that screen Shutdown Options button:
So far it's been a blast using Windows 2008 in my laptop. Vista x64 was becoming truly unusable, even with a 7200RPM disc, 4GB RAM and 2.2Ghz proc.
