Hello Everyone, I have a windows 2003 R2 machine which was running an evaluation copy of windows OS. After some time I got a valid license key from my organization and entered the key and activated the OS successfully. However I still get a message that my copy of windows has expired and the system will shut down in 1 hour. I don't want to re-install because I have installed some 3rd party software on this machine with great difficulty. Since my OS is valid, how can I get rid of this evaluation copy expired message without a complete re-install?

Not all are upgradeable. Your best chance I think is to perform an in-place upgrade. If you have service packed the install then you'll need to create an integrated install point to do the repair install from. Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

Hello,MAKE SURE TO HAVE A BACKUP before choosing this way.Copied from another posting:- Insert the CD in your server, and reboot the server- Once you get te "press any key to boot from CD... " do so- When you are prompted to press F6 to add drivers, do so if you need to... and proceed to the next step- Once you are up to the install/repair (with recovery console) chose to install then proceed to the next step- Press F8 to acknowledge the license, then the installer will search for an already installed version of Windows and should discover your current 2K3server.- Choose to repair this installation and the upgrade will proceed.- Once it pops you the screen to select the keyboard, language and regional settings, ajust it to you needs...- It should then ask for your License number, which you can enter here (make sure it's your new valid license) and continue installation.- Installation will complete and reboot your server.- Log in with your user account you should be back- you will have 60 days to activate your windows, and you will need to re-apply all windows update because the machine is more or less newBest regards Meinolf Weber Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.