MIcrosoft SQL Server 2008 Evaluation Period Has Expired.

An instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was once installed in evaluation mode. After the mode had expired, when launched, the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio would present a message that the “Evaluation period has expired. For information on how to upgrade your evaluation software please go to …”. This message persists even after the in place upgrade. Here is the reason and the steps to correct.

According to the MSDN blogs, this will occur in versions of SQL Server 2008 prior to the SP1 update. To manually correct the bug, Set CommonFiles registry value to 3 in HKLM\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\100\ConfigurationState Registry Hive. You will then need to reinstall (if the tools are not installed currently) or run edition Upgrade.

Here is the code.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server0\ConfigurationState]
"CommonFiles"=dword:00000003

According to Microsoft, the following command should work.

Setup.exe /q /ACTION=editionupgrade /INSTANCENAME=MSSQLSERVER /PID=&lt;PID key for new edition&gt;" /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS

However, in this case an MSDN copy already has the license key embedded, so this command did work…. partially.

Setup.exe /q /ACTION=editionupgrade /INSTANCENAME=MSSQLSERVER