Hello Jason,
windows 2003 is officially not supported as a GUI 8.1 platform. I guess for a reason that you stumbled in.
Here is a list of supported platforms for the user interface component:
Windows Vista (32-bit)
Windows Vista (64-bit) (x64)
Windows 7 (32-bit)
Windows 7 (64-bit) (x64)
Windows 8 (32-bit)
Windows 8 (64-bit) (x64)
Windows Server 2008 (32-bit)
Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit) (Itanium, x64)
Windows Server 2012 (64-bit) (x64)4-bit) (Itanium, x64)
Windows Server 2012 (64-bit) (x64)
Regards
Nikolay
