Reinstalling BU exec8.6

[Mike_Starr]

Our operating system (2k server) became corrupted and had to be reinstalled along with the software. Backup exec8.6 would only reinstall as a evaluation copy because it is an upgrade product.
It was upgraded from Seagate V7 but when I try to install Seagate V7 get the error message 'Need operating system NT4 or lower'

Any comments much appreciated

[Ken_Putnam]

You need to contact Veritas and have your v7 and v8 serials handy, after verifying them Veritas should give you a valid v8 install serial

(At least they would when v8 was still a supported version. Now that v9.0 is the lowest suported version, who knows?)

[Simon_Armstrong]

You could also do something that will require a little work.

If I remember correctly, when you buy an upgrade license, you enter that number during the installation and it creates a "full" serial number for the new version (in cases such as what you are in), so you'll be able to install v8.6 using that serial number.

If you've ran the bediag.fax on the old server (at any time after backup exec was upgraded to 8.6) you could restore this file (from a different backup exec server, or even NTbackup), the serial number you had should be in this file.

[Mike_Starr]

Thanks but I have tried this and Veritas in their wisdom declined to help.

Perhaps I should look for another backup software publisher

[Ken_Putnam]

If you did NOT use software compression, you could look for the BESERNUM.TXT file on a backuptape. As I recall, that contained the altered update serials and could be used for re-installes from the Update Disk

[Simon_Armstrong]

Seems like there heaps of ways to get the number back hey Ken ;)

Another way is to re-instal v7x onto a different server (non W2k box, if you have an NT box then it will work), then upgrade to 8.6, this will give you a full version serial number for 8.6, therefore you use that serial number on your W2k server (then of course uninstal backup exec on the NT server).