Extend Home Server “Vail” beta installation

The public beta for Windows Home Server codenamed “Vail” expires today. As a result, current installations will reboot hourly because the server would have moved into expiry mode.

Microsoft have provided a workaround to extend the expiry in the interim, until the next beta is released. This workaround is based around Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Release Candidate.

To extend the expiry, you can do the following:

  1. Install WS08 R2 SP1 RC on the server from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyId=c3202ce6-4056-4059-8a1b-3a9b77cdfdda&hash=2SduI20oa3rGcMvoU%2bPV1TVHUik%2f3CNeLRmMuOcJXzz13kgszkD2VWTIpb%2bAS0in9K12Sc14FpC3sdT4PNXCUw%3d%3d
  2. Logon on https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer with your connect credentials
  3. Click on Product keys (in the left hand side column)
  4. Click on Request a new product key
  5. Click on Get Key
  6. In Windows Home Server, open a command prompt
  7. Type “slmgr.vbs -ipk ABCDE-FGHIJ-KLMNO-PQRST-UVWXY” (where ABCDE.. is your new key as requested above)
  8. Type “slmgr.vbs –ato
  9. Reboot the server, and your beta timeframe has been extended.  You can check this by opening up a command prompt and typing winver

You can view the Microsoft information on this topic here – http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/whsvailbeta/thread/9d459f48-2e9e-4279-ade1-6d4d5e907e4c

The Windows Home Server Blog page is here – http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/windowshomeserver/

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