Can I actually run windows server 2003 in my M3 macbook?

You cannot run any Intel-based OS on an Apple Silicon Mac – either on "bare metal", or in a pure virtual machine created by a program like Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion. Apple Silicon processors do not have the same kind of machine language as Intel ones. A pure virtual machine gets its speed by using the host CPU to directly run most of the code inside of the virtual machine, which means that the guest must be written using the same basic type of machine language as the host.

To run an Intel-based OS on an Apple Silicon Mac, you would need a program that emulated an Intel machine and processor. With emulation, software on the host decodes and simulates the effect of each of the guest's machine code instructions, one by one.

Running a OS in emulation is often horribly slow, and I do not know if there are any alternatives (QEMU/UTM, or the Parallels Desktop x86 emulator) that are even semi-practical. For example, the Parallels Desktop emulator (which requires a subscription) is "slow, really slow"; and does not support using USB devices with emulated installations of Windows; and does not support any version of Windows earlier than Windows Server 2019/2022.

uuueeeyy wrote:

i don't have bootcamp assistant, and i have tried other alternatives like using vmware or UTM but it always fails

As of yet, there is no Boot Camp for Apple Silicon Macs.

You can run the ARM version of Windows 11 inside of a Parallels Desktop virtual machine, but neither Apple nor Microsoft has made the provisions necessary to allow booting Windows 11 for ARM as the main (host) OS.

Microsoft Support – Options for using Windows 11 with Mac® computers with Apple® M1®, M2™, and M3™ chips

Hi,

No, I think you can't run Windows Server 2003 on your M3 MacBook.

No for Apple Silicon Mac. You can set up a Windows Sever 2003 virtual machine instead.