Techie Guru

Don’t want to read the story? Jump to the Solution!

So, I had a client that was needing to increase the amount of RAM beyond 32GB on a SQL Server. I start researching ways to make that migration and ran across the Microsoft endorsed method of using DISM to do an in-place upgrade from Standard to Enterprise or Datacenter. Well, my client is licensed for Standard and Enterprise, so this method sounded like a great way to resolve the RAM limitations of Standard edition.

It’s a fairly straight forward process. The instructions can be found here, and directly from Microsoft here. I will mention a small caveat… If your licenses are volume, then you need to use the Microsoft Public KMS key to change editions. After the upgrade, you put your key back in. The other qualifier is that the target server CAN NOT be a DC.

On with the story. All went well with the upgrade, including the insertion of the proper key and subsequent activation of Server 2008 R2 Enterprise using the clients key. Everything looked fine and seemed to be running properly. No errors in the event log, and the areas I checked out looked good.

The next morning, I get a call from my client telling me they cannot print from remote sessions (this is also an RDS server). I connect to the server and get the exact same results. An error message that ends with “Could not create print job”. A few minutes later I get a call from their controller, who is trying to do payroll, and cannot get the application to open properly. I suggest they start by contacting the vendor of the app and we’ll go from there. I continue troubleshooting the printing issue, and discover the Print Management cannot open the snap-in MMC component.

Then I get a call from the accounting vendor. We troubleshoot his app for a bit and find the it accesses some if it’s components via IIS, which looks to be running but not serving data. We decide to reboot. As soon as that reboot is complete, we no longer have even the basic RDS services. I’m down to using an alternate method to connect and admin the server. I check all the basics. Firewall is off. UAC is disabled. IP address and network settings have not changed. No events in Event Viewer. The server appears to be alive and completely healthy.

We troubleshoot a bit longer and determine that there must be some sort of connectivity or communication issue internal to the OS. I decide to work at it a bit more, but ultimately decide to engage MS Support. I also decide to work on this from the comfort of home, as it would likely be a long night.

I create the MS Support request once I get home. I know I have a while to wait (supposedly no more then two hours), so I decide to find some dinner and let my brain veg out on some TV. Two hours passes and no phone call, but I start thinking of other things to look for. A brain break will do the IT guy good sometimes.

I remember from searches earlier in the day that there was at least one person that gave up and reloaded his server from scratch. For me, that is not an option. I start making simpler queries. These lead me down the path of discovery. I see several people with this issue that found temporary fixes, as well as some apparently untested suggestions. I start researching each of these and find more useful information. With each of these threads, strings and nuggets of information, I started to formulate a solution.

It turns out that the component that was broken was licensing. Windows was reporting that it was “Genuine” and activated, but in reality the license management module thought it had an invalid key and had told all the vital components to cease their function until they were licensed again.

I want to save others from hours of time and turmoil (not to mention a hefty MS Support bill)and make sure that the complete solutions gets out to those that may need it. Here it is, as concise as possible.

First I removed any and all traces of the license keys:

slui –ckms (This clears any KMS entries)

slui –upk (The removes installed product keys)

After running these the desktop will go to BLACK and tell you that your version of windows might not be genuine. DO NOT REBOOT YET!

Next, navigate to the Microsoft Windows Validation site. This process will reinstall/repair your damaged licensing components. For me, it reinserted a generic key and validated my Windows Server 2008 R2 as Genuine.

Reboot!

After the reboot, if you look at system properties, you will likely see that Windows only has 4GB available of however much you have installed. In my case, I had 4GB of 28GB available. At this point, I clicked “Change Product Key” on the properties page and pasted in my proper key for Server 2008 R2 Enterprise.

This completed and activated and told me to reboot to activate all the features.

After the reboot, all components, applications and sub-systems were working exactly as they should.

At that moment, I finally received my phone call from MS Support, 3.5 hours after opening the support request with the promise of a call within two hours. I thanked them for the call, and informed them that the problem was already resolved without their assistance.

I don’t believe Microsoft would have come up with a solution to this problem. This took too much research and was such an odd problem that I believe they would have eventually told me to format and reload my server. I found instances of others that faced this problem, and ultimately did completely reload their servers. Hopefully I can save someone that fate with this information.