What is the technical difference between Windows server and regular desktop Windows

Question

I want to know the technical details about the differences between windows server and regular desktop windows. Specifically Windows 10 and server 2008.

I am trying to solve a problem in one of my applications, which runs perfectly fine on our machines, but crashes on our client's server. I am completely baffled as to why this happens, and am looking for some clues.

Solution

As @Rudolph mentioned in eir comment, you will need to be more specific for us to have a good chance of fixing the issue. Things like error messages or codes, logged events, even a general idea what kind of app we're talking about here...

However, I can give a rundown of some of the differences between "regular" Windows (Client) and Windows Server that can impact compatibility.

• IE Enhanced Protected Mode makes IE much safer, but means that applications which need to load web pages using IE (possibly including embedded IE frames) may not work, because EPM disables a number of features to minimize attack surface.
• "Desktop" components (like Windows Media Player) not installed on Server by default. They can be installed, but are not usually needed on servers.
• 32-bit version. While Win10 is still available on 32-bit platforms, Windows Server no longer is (though I think Server 2008 - the initial release, not R2, which is actually a significantly different version - was the last version with a 32-bit version). In practice, this shouldn't matter, but if for some reason your app didn't work on 64-bit versions of Windows (for example, it needed to load a 32-bit driver or run a 16-bit program, or it made unwise assumptions about the filesystem and registry layout) then that could be a problem. If it runs on 64-bit Win10, though, it should run on 64-bit Server.

Of course, there's another difference: simple release version. Win10 is brand new, running on the NT10.0 kernel with support for all the latest APIs. Server 2008 is seven years old, released around the time of Vista SP1; it runs on the NT 6.0 kernel, now four releases out of date. While relatively few APIs were added in any given release between 6.0 and 10.0 (the intervening versions, just to be confusing, are 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3), they do add up somewhat. If your app didn't specifically target 6.0, it may be using APIs that are not present on that version.

Have you tested whether your app runs on Vista (or, if the client is actually running Server 2008 R2, tested the app on Win7)?