Small Business Server Upgrade!!!

I’ve been under a bit of pressure today, trying to find answers!!!

I have got this customer who would like to have MS Exchange installed in her network. They already have a Server running Windows 2003 Standard Edition, and we recommened moving to Small Business Server 2003 Standard as they only had 7 users in total.

Microsoft do support upgrades from Windows 2003, to SBS 2003 and have the process documented. Unfortunatley both the versions I was working were R2. Now there not much documentation on this, but as I learnt last - well basically the upgrade does not work!

So I fired this message to my contact at Microsoft:-

“I read it was possible to “upgrade” Windows 2003 Server to SBS 2003 Server.
So I bought the software for a customer with 10 user lics, and proceeded to
carry out the upgrade.

We it didnt work, I kept getting a message in the exchange install log,
saying that the version of exchange I was installing was not supported on
Windows 2003 Stand R2, only on SBS 2003!

Anyone know if there is a way around this?”

————————–

Bill Peng form Microsoft replied…..

“The reason why you experienced this is that you’ve installed Windows Server
2003 R2 domain controller before upgrade Windows Server 2003 to SBS 2003
R2. Thus, the schema version has been upgraded to 31.

To resolve the problem, please follow the KB article 936915.

Error message when you try to upgrade to Windows Small Business Server 2003
R2: “Setup was interrupted because of either user intervention or an
unexpected error”
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936915

Note: After doing this, you will not able to install Windows Server 2003 R2
CD 2 functionalities (except FSRM which has been included in SBS R2). If
you need Windows Server 2003 R2 features, you must install another Windows
Server 2003 R2 DC, and upgrade the SBS R2 schema by following these steps:

1. Insert Windows Server 2003 R2 CD2 in the SBS 2003 server.
2. Open a command prompt and run ADPREP /ForestPrep from
<CDDRIVE>:\CMPNENTS\R2\ADPREP”

I hope the above info helps”

So the morale of the story is?

Its good to know someone who knows! or maybe think twice when working with “R2 technologies”

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