SOLVED: VIDEO: This Edition Cannot Be Upgraded – Fix For Windows Server Activation Error

We recently licensed a copy of Windows Server 2016 from a website named Digital Software Planet.  There instructions were to download and install a 180 day evaluation copy of Server 2016 from the Microsoft Evaluation center.  They also provided a standard product license key but when we entered it we were unhappy to see it respond with THIS EDITION CANNOT BE UPGRADED

The solution was to remove the evaluation CAB and activate via command line and we show you how to do that here:

The command is:

1. Open Command Prompt (CMD) or a PowerShell as administrator
2. Enter DISM /online /Set-Edition:ServerStandard /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXX /AcceptEula
   • obviously replacing X’s with your product key