In-place upgrade from Windows Server 2012 Foundation to Windows Server 2012 Standard

I was attempting to upgrade from Windows server 2012 Foundation to Windows 2012 Standard without having to wipe and reinstall.

Is there an in-place upgrade path for these editions, and if there is, is there any documentation on it? The only one I could find pointed to an upgrade from Essentials to Standard, but didn't explicitly mention that that was the only possible upgrade.

I have exhausted my patience with Microsoft support who don't seem to have an answer for me!

This question is similar in requirement and error to (In-place upgrade from Windows Server Standard to Enterprise or Datacenter) but varies significantly by the Version and Edition.

What further info do you need to assist me in finding a solution?

Solution 1:

"Upgrade of Windows Server 2012 Foundation is not supported."

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj679892.aspx

Solution 2:

I know this is an old post, but I was recently confronted with needing to upgrade a Windows Server 2012 R2 Foundation to Standard in order to add the Hyper V role to the server so it could take over for an existing Hyper V server with failing hardware. Due to COVID-19, I was only able to implement a solution remotely without a site visit. I want to preface this by saying this is in no means meant to get around licensing (I have a volume license agreement for Windows Server) and is definitely not supported, but given that I had no other option, I wanted to post the solution.

When you go to install an upgrade, the supported upgrade paths are checked in 2 registry Values located in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version"

Value 1: ProductName / Value 2: EditionID

If you can look up these values in an existing server, you find that Server 2012 R2 Standard ProductName=Windows Server 2012 R2 Standand / EditionID=ServerStandard

By changing the values that were in there for Foundation to these, I was able to immediately (no reboot needed) launch the Server 2012 R2 Standard setup and it proceeded to perform an in-place upgrade that worked flawlessly.

Hopefully this helps out someone else stuck in a similar circumstance. PS - You can use a similar procedure to upgrade Windows 7/10 Professional to Enterprise