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Activation Issue--Evaluation to OEM

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A while back I purchased the WHS 120-Day Evaluation from Microsoft. I installed and then activated the evaluation copy and used if for a couple of months. I decided to order the OEM software since WHS worked great for me. I also decided to beef up my server box a little. I rebuilt the server and installed the evaluation copy since my OEM copy hadn't arrived yet. I saw no point in activating the evaluation copy since I was going to use the OEM anyway, so I didn't activate it. I got busy and didn't get the OEM upgrade done on the evaluation copy. Now when I try to login so I can upgrade the eval copy I get the warning that I can't login until I activate. The problem is that the evaluation copy won't activate because I had activated it a few months back before I upgraded the hardware on the server. I called the activation line, they gave me the code to enter to allow it to activate and it still wouldn't activate. The gentleman at the activation line transferred me to another support department and after another 30 minutes there I was told that they couldn't help me any further because they don't support WHS. I explained that this wasn't a support call, but an activation issue, but didn't get any further.

So my question is, without being able to activate so I can login, how in the world can I upgrade from the eval copy to the OEM software without having to completely reinstall the software? Is there anyway to accomplish this?

Thanks in advace for any help.

Justin

Saturday, March 29, 2008 11:29 PM

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jutley wrote:

A while back I purchased the WHS 120-Day Evaluation from Microsoft. I installed and then activated the evaluation copy and used if for a couple of months. I decided to order the OEM software since WHS worked great for me. I also decided to beef up my server box a little. I rebuilt the server and installed the evaluation copy since my OEM copy hadn't arrived yet. I saw no point in activating the evaluation copy since I was going to use the OEM anyway, so I didn't activate it. I got busy and didn't get the OEM upgrade done on the evaluation copy. Now when I try to login so I can upgrade the eval copy I get the warning that I can't login until I activate. The problem is that the evaluation copy won't activate because I had activated it a few months back before I upgraded the hardware on the server. I called the activation line, they gave me the code to enter to allow it to activate and it still wouldn't activate. The gentleman at the activation line transferred me to another support department and after another 30 minutes there I was told that they couldn't help me any further because they don't support WHS. I explained that this wasn't a support call, but an activation issue, but didn't get any further.

So my question is, without being able to activate so I can login, how in the world can I upgrade from the eval copy to the OEM software without having to completely reinstall the software? Is there anyway to accomplish this?

Thanks in advace for any help.

Justin

You have to "reinstall" anyways (there is no upgrade option). Try booting from the OEM DVD and see if you have an option for Server Reinstallation. (This will wipe your OS partition but leave your data in tact). NOTE: Do NOT do New Installation as that will wipe all drives when you install.

Saturday, March 29, 2008 11:34 PM

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jutley wrote:

Thanks in advace for any help.

Justin

Saturday, March 29, 2008 11:34 PM

Moderator

Thanks for the reply. I did try that but didn't see an option that would help me. I'll try that again though and see if I was just missing something previously.

Sunday, March 30, 2008 3:45 PM

I have a similar problem. My eval is working, however, when I try to install the OEM version I don’t get a message to reinstall. The only option is to ha a new install and I get a warning that all the info in my hard drives is going to be lost. I just stop or cancel the installation and now I don’t know how to proceed.

Any comet will be gladly appreciated.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008 12:15 AM

It's important that all of your disks be present and detected for WHS Setup to present you with the reinstallation option. Please make sure, when you reinstall, that you supply all required storage drivers at the appropriate times. You need them once during the initial graphical setup, when it's detecting storage devices, then again at the very beginning of text-mode setup (the "Press F6" prompt). You can verify that you're supplying all the drivers by checking the list of storage devices detected during the initial graphical setup phase; if you're missing disks, then you don't have all the drivers.

Proposed as answer by Jazo97 Saturday, September 11, 2010 8:25 PM

Tuesday, April 1, 2008 1:37 AM

Moderator

I see my disks. However, they don't come in the proper size. Would this mean I have a driver problem?

Thursday, July 3, 2008 3:10 AM

Curtis Finney wrote:

I see my disks. However, they don't come in the proper size. Would this mean I have a driver problem?

Not likely. I would guess it's the BIOS on the mobo (or card if hooked up to that). What size are they and what do they show up as during installation?

Thursday, July 3, 2008 3:37 AM

Moderator

Curtis, it's possible that you have no problem. If you have e.g. a "160 GB drive" the manufacturer will say it's 160 GB, and the BIOS and opertaing system will both say it's ~149 GB. Both are correct; the manufacturer specifies drive sizes in 10⁹ bytes (=1,000,000,000 bytes), while the BIOS and operating system measure in 1024³ bytes (=1,073,741,824 bytes).

Thursday, July 3, 2008 3:47 AM

Moderator

I have three drives. One that is a normal IDE drive that runs off the motherboard. WHS runs off of that drive. I have two SATA drives that run off of a card (this is an older P4 machine that I obtained from the scrap pile at work). The drives are 500Gb (465Gb). However, the interesting thing is that they show up as the following:

Disk/Vol Size Bus/FS Name

Disk 0 111Gb ATA

Vol1 20Gb NTFS SYS

Vol2 91Gb NTFS DATA

The two 500Gb drives and SATA card were installed after I had the evaulation of WHS running. I set up the drives to "mirror" through WHS.

Thanks for your help. Sorry for the late response - been busy with a new baby.

Saturday, July 12, 2008 3:34 AM

Curtis,

Where are you seeing this information? The correct place to see your disks, is in the Server Storage tab of the Console.

The information you've typed, is just one drive, your system drive. This is 11GB formatted, of which 20GB is taken by the system, and the balance is your data partition.

Also, what do you mean by 'mirror', WHS doesn't mirror drives, all the available space is seen in effect, as one long storage space.

Colin

Saturday, July 12, 2008 3:31 PM

I see this information when I insert my new OEM disk into my WHS machine and try to perform a re-install of my server software without screwing up my data. According to this post and others it can be done. However, I don't get the proper "re-installation option". It wants to wack everything. I understand that WHS doesn't mirror drives. I was trying to reference the duplication across drives feature (couldn't remember the name for it) - which is why I used the quotes around "mirror". I have my WHS set for file duplication across drives. I was thinking the fact that my drives don't come up with the correct storage space when WHS tries to reinstall, might point to something that is causing me not to see the "re-install server" feature. Any help would be appreciated.

Saturday, July 12, 2008 4:19 PM

Curtis Finney wrote:

That's correct. It sounds to me like you are missing the drivers for the other SATA card. In order for Server Reinstallation to work, WHS must see all of the drives at the beginning. Since you aren't loading the drivers for the card, it can't give you the Reinstallation option. You'll need to add the drivers manually (most likely using a floppy disk since it will need to be done twice and while the first can be done through USB, the second time really only works from a floppy disk).

Saturday, July 12, 2008 4:33 PM

Moderator

Thanks that was very helpfull. However, now I am stuck at "Finalizing Installation". The status bar is blank and it says "Connecting to Storage Manager Service". I did get an installation error early and I was able to install my SATA card drivers again. Any ideas?

Sunday, July 13, 2008 4:26 AM

Curtis Finney wrote:

It may be rebuilding the tombstones. When this is happening, it appears that it's "stuck", but in fact, it's not. Check the activity lights on your hard drives. If they are active, just let it run. (NOTE: This process can take quite a while, so patience is needed for this part. ) However, if your hard drives show no activity, you may have to start over.

Sunday, July 13, 2008 4:51 AM

Moderator

Thanks. Any idea on how long it might take? It's been running for over 12 hours so far and no progress on the progress bar. My hard drives do turn on every once in a while and I see the CPU is pretty well utilized. In task manager searchindexer.exe and explorer.exe are using the majority of the CPU power. Thanks again for your help!

Sunday, July 13, 2008 5:39 PM

A note from a user doing this earlier, said it took in excess of 12 hours for 4GB of data. (I think!) I've done a re-installation with a lot less data that that, and it still took overnight.

Colin

Sunday, July 13, 2008 5:51 PM

Curtis Finney wrote:

In addition to what Colin said, some people (at least during the beta testing of WHS) had to wait a couple days for it to finish.

Sunday, July 13, 2008 6:06 PM

Moderator

I think it has been running for three days now. Should I see some progress on the progress bar if it is working (I don't see any)?

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 2:24 AM

Curtis Finney wrote:

I think it has been running for three days now. Should I see some progress on the progress bar if it is working (I don't see any)?

Wow, that does seem like a REALLY long time. Do you have any idea how much data you had on your server as a guess (both in GB and number of files)?

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 2:33 AM

Moderator

I estimate that I have about 200 Gb. I am not sure on the file count.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 3:10 AM

Curtis Finney wrote:

I estimate that I have about 200 Gb. I am not sure on the file count.

That definitely doesn't sound normal to me (I would guess with 200 GB it would be done in less than a day).

Are the hard drives still active (are the hard drive lights still running)? Did you build this machine yourself? What prompted you to do a Server Reinstallation?

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 3:24 AM

Moderator

My hard drives are still a bit active (just a blip every 3 seconds or so). I got a low virtual memory paging file error this morning and another error "Installing Windows Home Server Failed: The remot procedure failed. (error code 0x800706be). The machine is an old HP P4 - I didn't build it myself - I did install a SATA card to allow my to use 2-500 Gb SATA drives. I did a Server Reinstallation because my Trial license was over.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:19 PM

Curtis Finney wrote:

I think you are going to have to start over. I can't imagine it should take that long.

Did you have any problems running the eval on that machine (weird error messages, bad performance, etc)? How much RAM is in it?

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 3:24 PM

Moderator

I didn't have any problems with the eval - it ran great and performance was great. However, I installed my SATA card and drives after I got the eval running. I do have only 500mb of RAM. I am thinking of slipstreaming my SATA driver into my install DVD.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 10:09 PM

Thanks again for your help. I gave up and started from scratch.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 3:30 AM

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Activation Issue--Evaluation to OEM

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