Windows Server: Extend expired Evaluation Period

Have you ever used an evaluation license within Windows Server and had it expire on you just before you've finished your project?  Yip, I think we've all hit that snag every so often.

In this article, I want to cover how you extend the Windows evaluation period for the server.

Windows Server 2016/2019

To reactivate your trial license, you need to open a command prompt; this can be something like Command Prompt or PowerShell.

The Software Licensing Management Tool (SLMGR) tool is the one you want to invoke.  There are a lot of switches with this tool.  The ones we are concerned with are:

slmgr.vbs -dlv

This command displays the current license information with activation information as well.  It's a pretty helpful command and provides a great deal of information.

The second command is the one that rearms the license:

slmgr.vbs -rearm

Be sure to reboot the server after this command to initiate the changes.  Once you have done that, you can again use the -dlv switch to check the licensing status and how many rearms you have left.

This syntax will work on older versions of Windows Server as well.