"You Are Now Free to Upgrade Your Servers..."

Several weeks ago, Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for SharePoint. It was great! SP2 fixed many problems, large and small, as well as introduced a feature to scan your environment for potential upgrade issues.

There was just one problem. If you were running anything other than plain Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), SP2 would trip an expiration flag that made your computer think you were running an evaluation version. For many users this was just a little inconvenience. You could simply re-enter your product key, and the timeout would be removed. Unfortunately, users of Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express (MSSX) were in a pickle. For you see, MSSX doesn't have a license key.

Of course, MSSX user or not, Microsoft didn't plan for SP2 to do this. So they have been working diligently to come up with a patch to resolve the issue. As of last night, that patch has been released. You can read about the details, and/or download it, on the SharePoint Team Blog, or KB Article 971620.

So, install the patch, apply Service Pack 2, and the April 2009 cumulative update package, and you'll soon be SharePoint-ing your way into the future!