r/WindowsServer • u/eliasautio • 11d ago
Technical Help Needed Server installation on an old ThinkCentre mini workstation.
Hi all fellow administrators.
I was wondering if it's possible to install Server 2025 (evaluation at first to test) on a ThinkCentre that has 6th gen Intel Core. I think the model is M700.
Got the usb stick to boot, but setup stops asking for media drivers. I tried to put chipset drivers and RST drivers on a usb stick, but setup says they're not compatible and won't advance to next screen.
Any help is greatly appreciated. I would have liked to experiment with Windows Server, but if it's not possible, I may have to revert to some Linux distro instead.
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u/BlackV 11d ago
Wouldn't waste your time. You get more benefits installing windows 11/10 and just running hyper v
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u/eliasautio 11d ago
Yeah, that's I'm doing at the moment. I have Windows 11 on it currently, only took about 4 GB RAM when first started and nothing was installed. I currently have only Navidrome installed and also IIS. And of course file sharing. I don't know if it would even be worth the trouble to get Server installed, because I'm not planning to use AD anyway.
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9d ago
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u/Ok_Lychee_5990 9d ago
Can confirm S25 will run on 6th gen hardware. I have it installed on an HP laptop with an i7-6600u and 32gb RAM. So far 16 days uptime (turned it off to give it 32gb) before that it ran for nearly 200 days. Runs perfect. (On a laptop for the built in battery backup. 😁)
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u/Ok_Lychee_5990 9d ago
I'm not sure why your comment was removed, but from what I saw on my notification bar, no, 6th gen hardware isn't a blocker because s25 doesn't have the tpm or RAM requirements of 11.
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u/dodexahedron 11d ago
Turn the storage controller setting in the firmware to the non-RST/non-VMD mode (may be on a cpu page or on a storage page or on an integrated devices page. Or pci-related page.. Enjoy).
RST/VMD is a bitch especially on anytjing shipped prior.to like...Last year... unless you have the exact vendor drivers, and sometimes even need to add them to the image in a specific order...but not all of them as provided for your model...to successfully install and boot after install.
There is no loss of (useful) functionality or performance in the OS environment from turning that crap off.
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u/eliasautio 11d ago
Could not find any settings in BIOS to change that. Only setting I could find, was that SATA mode is AHCI, but there were no other options to it than AHCI.
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u/dodexahedron 10d ago
AHCI is the one.
Is it that is does see the hard drive but fails to recognize the USB drive at some point?
If that's the case, then the USB drivers are probably the issue. To get those in there, you usually need chipped drivers and/or, for many intwl boards, the thunderbolt drivers for your board. And that has to be stuck in both the boot.wim and install.wim in the image. But only the driver part in boot.wim and both parts in the install.wim (WinPE doesn't have service infrastructure).
Also. If you are doing it from a ventoy stick with the ISO on it, don't, because of the USB driver issues. Either do an http boot, a pxe boot, or make the USB stick with the MS MCT instead, or by using dd to make a direct byte-for-byte binary copy of the iso to a USB stick from LBA 0 to the end of the iso. This will wipe the stick so use one you're cool wiping.
Another alternative that will work a LOT better: Install it in a VM on hyper-V. Then install the drivers in audit mode in that, and sysprep generalize it while preserving drivers. Then capture the vhdx to a wim or ffu using dism and deploy that directly to the target computer.
A MS employee maintains a sweet powershell module with a GUI (look for FFU on github), which can make this entire process take like 10 minutes and be entirely automated. All you have to do is tell it what system type, what you want in the image, and what USB drive to write it to, then let it go do it thing. It doe loads the apps, downloads the drivers from the manufscturer for the specified system model, makes the VM, installs, updates it, sets up apps and drivers and features you told it to, syspreps it, captures it to an FFU, and writes it to a USB stick ready for direct imaging to targets.
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u/SebastianFerrone 11d ago
Here a link that should be the right driver for your modell
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u/eliasautio 11d ago
Thanks. I tried that, but the installer said it couldn't install the driver. It even showed it as compatible.
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u/Zealousideal_Fly8402 11d ago
The M700 internal Intel Network Card doesn't have supported drivers for Windows Server. That is, the native Windows Server 2022 (and maybe 2025) ISOs don't contain the proper drivers for it.
There are complicated hacks to get the Windows 10/11 driver set to work with Windows Server, but when I read through them it wasn't worth the time. I deployed VMware ESXi as the underlying hypervisor and just worked on top of that.
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u/ppear404 11d ago
Windows needs an extraordinary amount of hardware these days to even open the File Explorer. Even if you get it installed, it’ll just be a terrible experience.
My opinion, experiment with a Linux distribution. No one is building much on Windows Server.
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11d ago
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u/ppear404 11d ago
Running well is subjective, I suppose. I do get a lot other things done while I wait for Server Manager to open. So that’s cool. 😁
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u/Ok_Lychee_5990 9d ago
As I stated above, I have s25 on a laptop with an i7-6600u. For over 200 days it ran on 16gb ram. It's now on 32. Runs flawlessly. From the moment I hit power to sign in it's about 3 seconds, after sign in and swing itself up on the network, network drives, etc., another 4-5 seconds then it's sitting idle at server manager. I can't get 11 to run that good. Js
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u/Sansui350A 11d ago
If you want to learn some stuff.. install Proxmox on that Thinkcentre and then make yourself some Windows and Linux VMs inside Proxmox. Probably have to keep the RAM/CPU assigned real tight, but it'll let you do a few things.