I have server Essentials running on an Asus Motherboard with an AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ and 2 GB ram. The setup runs well, no major issues encountered.
However, I'm trying to install R2 on the same machine without any success at all, so I'm hoping that someone may have an answer for me.
Basically what is happening, whether I use USB or DVD, is that the files load, then the machine reboots and cannot find an operating system. It sets up the 2 boot options, Server2012 and Setup and boots to setup but doesn't find an OS.
I've tried with every option I can think of, checked the ram, tried with 1 stick only, tried with all the drives in and also with only 1 drive. Tried several changes in the BIOS, nothing.
I run with a very basic old video card so I decided to try a more modern one but the same thing happened, although it was able to throw up a very brief message onscreen. I had to record and play it back to be able to read it and found 0x000000C4.
According to Microsoft "This Stop error describes a DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION issue. So that sent me on a quest that sometimes gets beyond my limited comprehension.
The CPU supports CMPXCHG16B instruction which seems to be mentioned a lot, there is no setting in the BIOS to toggle that. The MB and CPU are not that old that they should be not able to run R2, I hope!
I have also tried to install from the server itself, both to an empty drive and the C: drive, this gets further than from media. It creates 2 folders $Windows.~BT and $Windows.~LS. But at some point along the way it stops and tells me it can't go any further and rolls back to Essentials.
Here's the setupact file from panther. https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=599801C27C6F4EE5&id=599801C27C6F4EE5%2122670