I recently was given a couple of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition special Not For Resale evaluation packs. These were given out at the Heroes Happen Here event here in Norway. Since my main Windows Server 2008 machine, running Standard Edition, was unlicensed at the moment I thought I would upgrade it to the NFR Enterprise edition.

I popped in the DVD and selected Upgrade from the install wizard. The process started and took about 45-60 minutes. Everything seemed to work after the upgrade. The screen resolution was reset to the default 800×600 and I had to reinstall the NIC driver, but apart from that everything seemed fine. After a little while I noticed that the server was acting sluggish and soon discovered that the MS Exchange System Attendant service (mad.exe) was consuming 100 % CPU continuously. In addition to being my Domain Controller the server was also running Exchange 2007, and apparently Exchange did not like that the underlying OS had been upgraded. I had half-way expected this and went into the Exchange install folder to run setup again in maintenance mode (setup.com /mode:recoverserver). Ufortunately, setup did not give me an option to recover the server, it just told me to select a new role to install. I then tried to use setup.com /mode:upgrade and now the server went through a reinstall. After the System Attendant was working normally and there were no issues. I also reinstall the latest rollup for Exchange.

So now I have a licensed Windows Server 2008 Enterprise edition server. The NFR pack says it is a special one year evaluation version, but slmgr.vbs does not report an expiration date. Hopefully it will last indefinitely.