We have a small webserver on a Server 2003 Standard box that needs to take advantage of the Advanced Fast Start feature of Windows Media Services which is only available on the Enterprise version. I assumed that I could simply upgrade to Server 2003 R2 Enterprise as an in place upgrade. It seems it's not quite that easy. Although R2 is a later version I'm getting the message that the system can't be upgraded because the installed version is newer than the one proposed for installation. I quickly came to the realization that the OS considers that both are from the same family and the updates already applied to the Standard version makes it "newer" than the R2 Enterprise.Short of manually rolling back all the updates, a very time consuming and uncertain process, is there any way around this?Thanks.

The installation media must match the service pack level of that on the server, i.e., Windows 2003 SP1disc -> Windows 2003 SP1 system and Windows 2003 SP2disc -> Windows 2003 SP2 system.To slipstream adisc use nLite:http://www.nliteos.com/Edit:How to upgrade Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 to Windows Server 2003 R2http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912309The following table shows supported SKU upgrades for Windows Server 2003 R2. Standard R2 Enterprise R2 Datacenter R2 Standard Yes Yes No Enterprise No Yes No Datacenter No No Yes

Hi, Please check the version of the system. If you have a Windows Server 2003 SP2 server without R2 installed, it is unsupported to install the SP1 version of R2 on the server. For more information: Upgrading when you have the SP2 version of Windows Server 2003 R2 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc756124.aspx