Windows Server 2008 build 4028

Windows Server 2008 build 4028 is the earliest available build of Windows Server 2008, which was shared at OSBetaArchive on 14 June 2006. It resembles Longhorn client builds and is the the first server build to use WIM installation method.

This is one of the only four available Server builds that are based on pre-reset code, the others are builds 4031, 4038 and 4066. It is also mentioned in the setup of all pre-reset builds starting with build 4039, where this build is the minimum required to upgrade.

New features and changes
This build contains many significant changes compared to its predecessor, making it more similar to build 4029 of its client counterpart:

WIM installation
This build is among one of the first server builds to use a new WIM-based setup routine, one of the first radical departures from the previous Windows NT codebase. The WIM-based setup routine works by having all of the setup files stored within a single WIM disk image,. When the installation media is booted directly, the WinPE (Windows Preinstallation Environment) loads into the graphical user interface itself. After it images the WIM file to the system partition, the system reboots to finish the setup by installing the hardware and running the OOBE. Microsoft stated that their goal with this routine was to allow installations of Windows to finish in as little as 15 minutes.

Interface

 * The login screen and shell has been updated to be identical to the interface from build 4029 of its client counterpart.
 * This build includes the Libraries system. Although the Games Library is include in this build, games are not installed by default on server editions.
 * Like the client build 4029, this build uses the Pig Latin strings.
 * Sync Manager is included. It was used to help sync WinFS files to other systems.

General

 * On some machines, the Windows logo on the start button will be incorrectly cropped.

Installation

 * This build will often hang or crash during setup in newer versions of VMware and QEMU. Using Microsoft Virtual PC or VirtualBox is recommended.
 * The hardware setup tends to hang easily, after a while, you can press Shift+F10 to open the Command Prompt. Then, run  and terminate the process   to log in.
 * Normally, it is not possible to upgrade to this build as setup complains about requiring build 4000 or higher. However, by using an external program called  you can bypass the restriction and successfully perform an upgrade.