SQL Server 2008 is now 6 months old. How do I know? Well, my evaluation copy just timed out! That’s 180 days. Services are stopped, SSMS doesn’t work. So happy half-birthday! But now what do I do? Well, I can try upgrading the edition with the Edition Upgrade Wizard. Let’s take a look…
If you start the SQL Server Installation Center, there is a Maintenance page. This is where you can launch the Edition Upgrade Wizard. Since I work for a Microsoft Gold Partner, I have access to official Product Keys and that’s exactly what you’ll need to upgrade. The good news is, that all editions are contained on the Product DVD, so it’s the Product Key which tells the system which edition should be installed. The upgrade only takes a few minutes and bingo, I now have an official Enterprise Edition for SQL Server 2008.
The services that stopped after 180 days are now running again. I can use SQL Server Configuration Manager to have a look – all green arrows, great. I can also connect using SQLCMD and run a few queries. So I launch SQL Server Management Studio and…oh no! Time bomb error “your evaluation period has expired”. Dang! To verify, I change the system date to a few days earlier and it works. But I am not going to get into the habit of switching the system date all the time. OK, so I’ll try to uninstall SSMS and reinstall from the Product DVD using the EE Key. That takes a while but when I come to launch again, same error. I also try to upgrade the “Shared Components” separately, which it lets me do, but that doesn’t get my SSMS to work either. Finally, a complete product uninstall/reinstall. Still no joy!
Maybe it’s because the 180 days ran out and the time-bomb poisoned my system. But everything else runs fine, it’s just the SSMS that times out. So I try to upgrade another eval system I have that has not expired yet. Everything works fine including SSMS. I take a look at SSMS Help/About and it says “expires in 6 days” so I put the system date forward a week and bingo – time bomb. The only solution I have found is to install the complete product on a freshly imaged system then copy the databases over from the other server, or install SSMS on another computer and access the upgraded SQL Server remotely.
So in my book this is a bug. And since SQL Server 2008 is now officially half a year old, some paying customers may be reporting this to Microsoft very shortly. Yes, I’ve already reported it…but I think it’s going to take someone with big bucks on the line to see any action – watch this space…
Happy half-birthday!
Cheers
Brian
How to: Upgrade to a Different Edition of SQL Server 2008:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc707783.aspx
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