I had issues converting one of my evaluation installations of Windows Server 2019 to a fully licensed copy. I’d extended the evaluation a few times using “slgmr /rearm” a few times, but had finally decided I was going to move this setup into production.

The issue

When going through the settings UI to activate, I could see an error message as below, and clicking the “Change product key” option did nothing.

Running through the CLI using “slmgr.vbs” also returned errors;

CMD: 

Cscript.exe %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs /ipk {key}

Error: 

0xC004F069 On a computer running Microsoft Windows non-core edition, run 'slui.exe 0x2a 0xC004F069' to display the error text.

Following the rabbit down the hole;

CMD: 

slui.exe 0x2a 0xC004F069 

Error: 

Code: 0xC004F069
Description:
The Software Licensing Service reported that the product SKU is not found.

The fix

After a bit of digging around, and coming across this forum post, I found out and remembered I could use the DISM tool to activate my version of Windows;

CMD: 

dism.exe /online /get-targeteditions

Returns:

Editions that can be upgraded to:
Target Edition : ServerStandard
Target Edition : ServerDatacenter

This confirms I can upgrade my evaluation version to a retail product.

To do this;

CMD:

dism.exe /online /set-edition:ServerDatacenter /productkey:{KEY} /accepteula

Returns:

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.17763.771
 
Image Version: 10.0.17763.1098
 
Starting to update components...
Starting to install product key...
Finished installing product key.
 
Removing package Microsoft-Windows-ServerStandardEvalEdition~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.17763.1
[==========================100.0%==========================]
Finished updating components.
 
Starting to apply edition-specific settings...
Finished applying edition-specific settings.
 
The operation completed successfully.
Restart Windows to complete this operation.
Do you want to restart the computer now? (Y/N)

After a reboot, we can see that my windows environment is licensed.

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