The two Windows 2003 servers we have now were purchased as OEMs. We are growing so we purchased some volume licenses so we could virtualize the servers. We cannot legally use the P2V converters on the existing OEMs because this is a change of hardware when we go virtual.
We do not want to have to rebuild the servers so I was hoping to use the same trick I used for the XP machines and windows 2003 server that do not have SP2 installed wich is outlined here:
Basically all the 25 digit keys are tied to a product type and if you change the PID in the registry you should be able to use your Volume license key. Unfortunately after installing SP2 on W2003 this seems to stop working. The only solution I see is performing an in place upgrade which I do not want to do because I tried it on a sample server and I got a BSOD when coming up to the final reboot.
I see people having success with this before applying SP2, but not after. Are there alternatives?
We do not want to have to rebuild the servers so I was hoping to use the same trick I used for the XP machines and windows 2003 server that do not have SP2 installed wich is outlined here:
Basically all the 25 digit keys are tied to a product type and if you change the PID in the registry you should be able to use your Volume license key. Unfortunately after installing SP2 on W2003 this seems to stop working. The only solution I see is performing an in place upgrade which I do not want to do because I tried it on a sample server and I got a BSOD when coming up to the final reboot.
I see people having success with this before applying SP2, but not after. Are there alternatives?
