I was relating a story to TR’s Mac-o-phile Erik Eckel

about having to use the Mac mini to burn some Windows Server 2003 R2

MSDN ISO images because I couldn’t get the new Dell Vista workstation

to do it, and he insisted I blog about it. So here we go.

I decided that we needed to be running Windows Server 2003 R2 in the

test lab and not plain old Windows Server 2003. As such, I downloaded a

fresh pair of images of R2 from MSDN. They come in an ISO format, which

like ISOs in the TechProGuild Download Center, require you to create

working CDs from the image. My production machine doesn’t have a

CD-burner on it. Nor does any other computer in near proximity. We had

a workstation on the test network that did have a burner on it, but

it’s now in pieces so I couldn’t use that. What to do?

Aha! Our brand new Dell Precision 380 comes with a DVD burner! We can

just use that. Wait… no we can’t. It’s running Vista 64-bit and the

CD burning software refuses to recognize the burner. Not a good sign.

Fortunately, I still had the Mac mini sitting in the cube and IT has a

CD burner in it. I disconnected it to play with Vista, so all I had to

do was swap some cables and fire it back up. Once I connected to the

test server that had the ISO images stored on them I got the CDs burned

in no time.

So now, while Windows Server 2003 R2 is installing on our new Dell

PowerEdge 1850, my coworker has a big grin on his face because his beloved Mac

was able to create the CDs to make it happen when the fancy new Dell

couldn’t. Talk about Job Satisfaction.