Windows Server 2012 - Unofficially convert RC to RTM

Completely out of the blue, a 2012 server rebooted on me today. Being the first time I've seen a 2012 server reboot for no apparent reason, I was intrigued to find out what caused it.  After logging into the console, I am hit with a notice that my evaluation had expired. Evaluation what the???

Did a quick search, and no problem MS has a KB on this. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj574204.aspx

From an elevated command prompt, run slmgr.vbs /dlv; evaluation versions will include “EVAL” in the output.

Ok, I don't see the words "EVAL" anywhere but I figured I would see what happens when I jump straight to the convert command.

DISM /online /Set-Edition:<edition ID> /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX /AcceptEula

This Windows image cannot upgrade to the edition of Windows that was specified. The upgrade cannot proceed. Run the /Get-TargetEditions option to see what edition of Windows you can upgrade to.



Ugh, it turned out that I was running RC version of 2012 Datacenter and the only supported path to upgrade would be to fresh install 2012 from scratch.

Searched for workarounds and found these sources.

• http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserver8gen/thread/6b1db612-84d3-46f1-abc7-740a1c0a5d8c/
• http://www.neowin.net/news/fool-the-windows-8-rtm-into-upgrading-the-release-preview

It appears that this has been used for Win7, 8 and 2012. The steps are quite simple and go like this.

• Copy RTM install media to the local disk of the target server needing to be converted
• Edit \sources\cversion.ini (I changed from 8508.0 to 8400.0) which was posted by a guy in the first link who had success with this method.
• Run the setup/install from local disk and next > next > activate your problems away assuming you have a valid key.

Lastly, this was a VMware virtual machine running on vmx-09 and it lost it's IP settings during the upgrade.  Added back the IP and all is well.