SQL 2008 Upgrade Standard to Enterprise: Fail

Question

I'm trying to upgrade an existing SQL Server 2008 SP1 Standard Edition to Enterprise.  Running the enterprise edition maintenance->Upgrade Edition wizard first got me the dreaded "Invoke or BeginInvoke cannot be called on a control until the window handle has been created." Eventually, I found an entry on Connect that mentioned closing all other windows and ensuring that the installer has the focus and this got me past that error. 

Now that I can run the edition upgrade through to successful completion, it's not actually doing anything. Edition still reports as "Standard" and enterprise features such as "Compress Backups" do not work. I've run the upgrade twice and restarted the system to no effect. Before I do a "Rip and Replace" does anyone have any ideas on how to actually get the edition upgrade to work?

Steve G.

OS: 

  Windows Server 2008 R2

DB: 

  Product: SQL Server Standard Edition (64-bit)

  Version: 10.0.2531.0

P.S. Just in case someone asks, yes, I did follow the instructions located here.

Answer 1

The Saga Continues ...

I decided that upgrading from SQL Server 2008 Standard to Enterprise wasn't working so I uninstall the SQL Server 2008 Standard instance, reboot the system and start installing SQL Server 2008 Enterprise. I hit several of those infamous "Invoke or Begin Invoke ..." errors, but eventually the install completes. SP1 gets installed next, and I now have a working ...

wait for it 

... SQL 2008 Standard edition system. Wait, what? Sure enough, @@Version reports an installation of Standard Edition. Check the media. It's Enterprise all right. Attempt to upgrade. After wading through a few more "Invoke or Begin Invoke ..." errors, the upgrade completes. Check @@Version - it's Standard. Still. Grrrrr.

Uninstall SQL Server. Delete directories. Go into the registry and manually rip out anything with the slightest whiff of SQL. Reboot and start the install. This time, I'm paying a little more attention to the process. Still getting installation hangs with "Invoke or Begin Invoke ..." errors, but when I finally get past that point, and review the installation configuration, it's going to install SQL Standard. Double check the media - it's Enterprise. So why is it trying to install Standard Edition? Repeat twice more, paying closer and closer attention to the install process. 

Then the light dawns. Somehow, somewhere, the SQL Server Enterprise installation is picking up the license key from the previous SQL Standard installation. Hence, the repeated installs of SQL Standard. Aha! Call upstairs to the server support folks: "What's the correct license key for our Enterprise SQL install?"... "You don't need one" is the reply "It's an enterprise wide license and you can just install it in the VM, no problem." After I explain my problem, they're left scratching their heads.

I never found out where the SQL installer stashed the license key, and we ended never being able to install Enterprise edition. We had to nuke the VM instance and completely rebuild it as a new, fresh Server 2008 R2 system. That turned out to be the only way to remove the references to the previous installation. Once we had a blank system, SQL Server Enterprise (finally) installed OK. Oh, and once the server had been rebuilt from scratch, there were no more "Invoke or Begin Invoke ..." errors. Hmm....

Hope your upgrade goes easier than mine!

Steve G.

Answer 2

Thanks Steve G.  Am having the exact same problem here and was hoping to see if you could provide a work around, instead you are saying a complete new clean VM is the only way?? At least you saved me the time spent doing a uninstall/reinstall which I was considering doing next.

You must be kidding Microsoft, I have just released the server into production under the assumption that the Upgrade tool had worked and now I see it never did, even though I receved no errors during the whole process and was told it was successful.

Please let there be a hotfix for this soon.

Answer 3

I'll say this once, because it's knee-jerk: Don't update production without testing it first!

Ok, that's out of my system. To answer your question, no I was never able to get around the problem. The only way we got this to work was to spin up a new, clean, VM, install SQL Server Enterprise, and move the databases. Overall, this doesn't take a long time. 

 

Steve G.

Answer 4

To upgrade an existing instance of SQL Server 2012 to a different edition, from the SQL Server Installation Center click Maintenance, and then select Edition Upgrade.

---

Reef