Windows 2008 R2 Standard > Enterprise in-place upgrade

Today I needed to upgrade a Windows 2008 R2 Standard OS (with a valid MAK key) to Enterprise. The reason was to utilize more RAM (>32 GB) on the server.
This is how I complete the upgrade:
  1. Did a backup of the server
  2. dism /online /set-edition:ServerEnterprise /ProductKey:489J6-VHDMP-X63PK-3K798-CPX3Y
    (this is a KMS key from Microsoft, LINK) from Jamie’s blog
    Got message “The operation completed successfully”
  3. Reboot server
  4. Logon to the server
  5. Enter a valid MAK key
  6. Reboot server
  7. Now I had an error that RDP wasn’t working (and Remote Desktop disappeared from Remote tab)
  8. slmgr /rearm (To remove the current license)
    Got message back that the command completed successfully and that I needed to restart
  9. Reboot server
  10. slmgr /ipk VALID-MAK-KEY
    Got message back that the key installed successfully
  11. slmgr /ato
    Got message back that the product was activated successfully
  12. Reboot server
The server then was upgraded to Enterprise OS with working RDP. I did this on a server with 4 SQL instances without any additional errors.

2 comments:

rh137 said...

Thank You, Rikard! Your post saved my life today :). Thank You.

rh137 said...

Thank You, Rikard! Your post saved my life today :). Thank You.