In-Place upgrade of 2008 R2 SP1 server to 2012

[adamf]

I'm trying to upgrade one of our fileservers to 2012 from 2008 R2 SP1. It already failed once and I was forced to rollback to the previous version of Windows. Now, when I try I am continually getting the "Windows Setup cannot find a location to store temporary installation files. To install Windows, make sure that a partition on your boot disk has at least 1198 megabytes of free space".

 

The C drive has 55GB free, D drive 78GB free and E drive 255GB free.

 

I've tried running the setup from the command line and using the /tempdrive: switch to specify the location the setup should place the temporary installation files but, no matter which drive I choose, I get the same error.

 

In case it makes a difference it's a VM.

 

Anyone have any ideas?

[snagrat]

I hate in place upgrades. Is building a new server not an option?

[adamf]

I'm toying with that idea... It's a VM, setup like this:

 

C: - OS

D: - Staff Docs

E: - Student Docs

 

I'm wondering if I could just build a temporary VM with 2012 as the OS, then take that VHD and attach it to my existing fileserver VM. As long as I keep the original VHD I can always go back to it should I have any problems.

[snagrat]

As long as your D: and E: drives are separate vhds then just attached them to the new server. You could copy them to be on the safe side

[robjduk]

I would recommend uninstalling any AV you have on the server as that can cause issues. Also silly as it sounds maybe run the disk clean-up utility.

 

Anyway for reasons best not to get me started on (grrrr SLG) I had to do an in place upgrade of my SIMS server from 2008 to 2012 using VMWare. I am lucky as I had space on my side so was able to create a clone of the VM, upgrade it off the network, switch the old one off and new one on. To be fair it worked bloody well and the server to this day is still ticking along perfectly.

[synaesthesia]

What hypervisor are you using? Make sure it's up to date. ESX *must* be 5.5.