Windows Server 2003

*Not mean to Windows XP*

The logo of Windows Server 2003

**Windows Server 2003** is a server operating system produced by Microsoft and released on April 24, 2003.It is the successor to Windows 2000 Server and the predecessor to Windows Server 2008 An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on December 6, 2005. Windows Server 2003's kernel was later adopted in the development of Windows Vista.

## Overview

Windows Server 2003 is the follow-up to Windows 2000 Server, incorporating compatibility and other features from Windows XP.Unlike Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003's default installation has none of the server components enabled, to reduce the attack surface of new machines. Windows Server 2003 includes compatibility modes to allow older applications to run with greater stability. It was made more compatible with Windows NT 4.0 domain-based networking. Windows Server 2003 brought in enhanced Active Directory compatibility and better deployment support to ease the transition from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional.

The product went through several name changes during the course of development. When first announced in 2000, it was known by its codename "Whistler Server"; it was named "Windows 2002 Server" for a brief time in mid-2001, followed by "Windows .NET Server" and "Windows .NET Server 2003". After Microsoft chose to focus the ".NET" branding on the .NET Framework, the OS was finally released as "Windows Server 2003".

## Development

Windows Server 2003 was the first Microsoft Windows version which was thoroughly subjected to semi-automated testing for bugs with a software system called PREfast developed by computer scientist Amitabh Srivastava at Microsoft Research. The automated bug checking system was first tested on Windows 2000 but not thoroughly. Amitabh Srivastava's PREfast found 12% of Windows Server 2003's bugs, the remaining 88% being found by human computer programmers. Microsoft employs more than 4,700 programmers who work on Windows, 60% of whom are software testers whose job is to find bugs in Windows source code. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stated that Windows Server 2003 was Microsoft's "most rigorously tested software to date."

Microsoft later used Windows Server 2003's kernel in the development of Windows Vista.

## Changes

The following features are new to Windows Server 2003:

* Internet Information Services (IIS) v6.0
* Significant improvements to Message Queuing
* Manage Your Server – a role management administrative tool that

allows an administrator to choose what functionality the server should
provide

* Improvements to Active Directory, such as the ability to deactivate classes from the schema, or to run multiple instances of the directory server (ADAM)
* Improvements to Group Policy handling and administration
* Provides a backup system to restore lost files
* Improved disk management, including the ability to back up from shadows of files, allowing the backup of open files.
* Improved scripting and command line tools, which are part of Microsoft's initiative to bring a complete command shell to the next version of Windows
* Support for a hardware-based "watchdog timer", which can restart the server if the operating system does not respond within a certain amount of time.[13]

The ability to create a rescue disk was removed in favor of Automated System Recovery (ASR).