Transition Pack from SBS2003

[mobyduck]

I'm trying to move a customer from a single server SBS2003 SP1 to multiple machine Server 2003 using the Transition pack to preserve licenses - we need to go this way because they are right on the 75 limit.

Running the upgrade to SBS2003 SP1 standard to include premium technologies has gone OK, but the upgrade to R2 Technologies has gone completely pear shaped. After about 40 minutes doing most of the stuff, the upgrade fails due to an unsupported version of IE. Checking the logs shows it fails if IE7 has ever been installed. Rolling back to IE6 doesn't do the trick either as other updates have promoted some libraries beyond the set levels.

It seems that if you follow Microsofts advice and have automatic upgrades, the instance of IE is promoted so high that the transition to R2 won't work. Obviously I can't run the transition pack without R2 technologies otherwise it won't allow me to transition the licenses.

An MS Webcast I listened to by a couple of MS Support people seem to suggest that they don't support this method as there are too many problems, and a clean rebuild is better.

Why sell the transition pack then ?? I'm begining to feel I should have spent the extra £9k for new licenses.

Anybody done the transition successfully ??

Regards

[MAD]
MD

 

[XofCDe3rd]

I have successfully done the upgrade via transition pack successfully

Like you we had to first upgrade from standard to R2 then use the transition pack

the only documented warning that came with the transition pack was a warning about a registry entry put in by varitas. when I wanted to find out how to prevent a major disaster because varitas was installed on the to be upgraded box, the helpdesk at microsoft said they were unable to help as the problem had not occured yet B-(

So after taking a last full backup with varitas I uninstalled and made sure that the registry entry was exported and deleted.

After running it I would find a rebuild much better alternative even though it is more expensive.