Just documenting this in case some other poor soul is stuck running this garbage and needs to move it from one Windows Server install to another...

I have the bad luck of still having to support this and it was originally loaded on a 2003 x86 server that was upgraded in place to 2008 x86. It's now 2019 and server 2008 will no longer be getting security updates past January 2020. There is no migration path from 2008 x86 to something newer. So, WCS needs to be either moved or reloaded onto something newer. The original plan was to spin up a fresh load and import the configuration backups. Herein lies the problem...even if you have the original installer for WCS it does two OS checks and won't proceed unless it detects server 2003. The first check can be bypassed simply by using compatibility settings on the self extracting exe, but the second check is performed by an installer written in Java. So this was a dead end, or so I thought.

Turns out the entire thing is written in Java and served out via Apache. For the most part it is very self contained with everything residing in its own install folder.

Do this...

1. Copy the WCS install folder off of the old server
   
2. Copy Start Menu program group
   
3. Export the registry keys for its two services (Apache and WCS)
   
4. Load new server (I used 2019) and give it the same hostname as the old server
   
5. Copy the install folder back to the new server
   
6. Copy the Start Menu group over
   
7. Import the registry keys
   
8. Open 443 and 80 on the local firewall if it's running
   
9. Start the services
   
10. Give it a couple minutes to catch its tail and open it up in a web browser
    
11. Done!
    

Only four things of note:

• I kept the original file pathing the same between both servers
  
• It's imperative you use the same hostname on the new server as the license will fail
  
• The service controls in the Start Menu program group need to be run as an administrator or they won't work. Probably a UAC thing...
  
• I'm running WCS 7.0. Your mileage may vary with other versions.
  

If you look around the net everyone will basically tell you not to try and Cisco had their reasons for only supporting 2003. Well, it's crap... The entire thing is written in Java. The whole point of that is it'll run on a toaster if you wanted it to. The whole thing stinks of planned obsolescence. Basically the same thing as the expiring built-in certs in the access points.

I hope this helps someone out there....