Upgrading SPS 2003 from Evaluation Edition to Full

[orbnsc]

Hi there, I've been evaluating SharePoint Portal 2003 for my company, and I set it up using the 120-day evaluation kit I got from Microsoft. I set up a demo portal and it looks great, but my evaluation period is about to expire and we're not yet ready to demo the thing to management. We're really close though, and I would like to extend the life of this demo portal for a while longer.

I have since purchased a full license and the media kit for SPS 2003, which will be used for the production portal. Is it possible to upgrade my time-limited portal to the full product? I'd hate to start from the ground up again, after four months of working on it and customizing.

OR - barring that option, is a fairly painless way to import the SharePoint database and IIS files from this older evaluation version of SPS to a newly installed full version?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Thomas2000]

Hello!

According to Microsoft you are able to enter a valid product key to make the evaulation or trial copy a valid one. This is what Microsoft says on their website about it.

"When the trial period expires, the product will go into reduced functionality mode. After the trial period expiration occurs, you can convert the trial software into perpetual use without removing or reinstalling software on your computer. Simply obtain the product at any retailer and enter the valid product key when prompted during setup."

But you might allready have seen that! Just thought I'd reply here.

Regards,
Thomas

 

[orbnsc]

Thanks for the tip Thomas2000, I'll try that one out, since I do have a full copy now. But I found that the cheesiest, lowest tech method worked as a stop gap measure: I set the system clock back a couple weeks! Now that the server thinks it's still July, it's running with no problems. I never thought that would actually work.

Yours is much better though. Thanks!

 

[lithiumSPS]

orbnsc,

We had the same occur with our evaluation version. I emailed all users and scheduled a site-down day. I first did a complete backup using the SHarePoint backup and restore tool. I then uninstalled SharePoint and reinstalled SharePoint. I then restored the SharePoint Portal from backup. Total downtime was 1 1/2 hours. The site was restored without any issue. Had some issues the first time restoring the site but worked through them and it also helped be develop disaster and recovery proceedures.

-Rob