Friday, May 22, 2009

Expiration Date of SQL Server Evaluation Edition

If you have installed the Evaluation / Trial Version of SQL Server, you may like to find out what is the expiry date of the Trial Version.  The Trial Edition or Evaluation Edition of SQL Server will expire exactly 180 days after the install date.  Using it after the 180 days period is violation of MICROSOFT evaluation license terms.  Anyways after 180 days when an install of Evaluation Edition Expires, the SQL Server services stop functioning.  So you must purchase the license for SQL Server and upgrade the Evaluation copy before the expiry date of the Evaluation.

But then how to find out the exact expiry date of Trial Version?  There are 2 ways to find out

  • From installation logs
  • From Management Studio
  • From installation logs
    A summary.txt file is get created during the installation of SQL Server.  So this summary.txt can give you the exact date and time of the SQL Server installation.  And the trial software will automatically expire after six months.  You can find summary.txt file under
    <Drive>\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\LOG\Summary.txt

    At the end of the file you can see something like

    Setup succeeded with the installation, inspect the log file completely for status on all the components.

    Time : Tue Dec 30 15:59:55 2008

    So after 180 days counting from 30 Dec 2008 i.e. 28 Jun 2009 the SQL Server Evaluation Edition will be expired.

  • From Management Studio
    Now this is very simple. Open the Management Studio, click on the “Help” of Menu Bar and then on “About”.  A new window will appear, where you will see some thing like:



    Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (expires in 102 days)


    See the Image : untitled12



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