Hello
We have been running a Windows Server 2008 Standard on an old HP ML350 server for many years. The old server finally kicked the bucket so we performed a bare-metal restore (using the Windows built-in restore from backup function) to a new (used) HP DL380 G6 server... the restore worked perfectly. The new server came right up and everything is working just as it was on the old server except for one major problem. The new server won't activate.
We used the Automated phone line activation utility but after putting in the zillion character installation id, the phone activation voice says the product is invalid and hangs up on me. We tried the "buy a new product key" option that the Windows Activation utility on the server offers as an option but when we get to the website it says the product is no longer available.
We have the original case and media that we purchased many years ago and the Product Key is on the card that came with the disk (actually 2 discs 32 and 64 bit versions).
What can we do at this point? We don't want to purchase another copy of Windows Server 2008 for fear we will just run into the same problem. The product we have is valid and has been running on our old server for many years. We can't upgrade to Server 2012 because we believe that 2012 only supports 64 bit versions and we must stay on a 32 bit platform so that existing (and irreplaceable) applications will continue to run.
Any suggestions?