If not the case, you can skip directly to step 3. Once verified hardware requirements, if the server has Domain Controller role, we must prepare the server for the upgrade. The first thing to do is to check if your hardware is compatible with the new operating system, by visiting this link: This operating system can be upgraded to Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition SP2 32-bit (R2 version of Windows Server 2008 is available only for 64-bit architectures). It is important that Windows Server 2003 has at least Service Pack 1 installed (in our example, the version that will be updated is Service Pack 2) and that the new operating system (2008) and the one to be updated (2003) have the same language and architecture (32 or 64 bit). Hardware/software prerequisites verification Just to be clear, we’ll start with the following operating system version:ġ.
However, the above link allows us to know, depending on the starting operating system, which version of Windows can be installed as an upgrade. Some of you may have tried and found that the following procedure described by Microsoft can hide a lot of untold problems: Suppose you have a server with an old Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system and you want to upgrade it to a newer Windows Server 2008 or 2012 version.
