So according to Sage’s website, they no longer support Windows Server Essentials as an OS of choice… even for the DataService. This is really strange, considering Sage Accounts 50 is aimed at Small/Medium Businesses as is Windows Server Essentials… so something doesn’t align. Anyway, this leads to the question, how can I install Sage 50 Accounts on Windows Server Essentials… well here’s how.
- Attempt the installation using the setup file provided by Sage as normal, when you receive the error message about the operating system being incompatible, click close.
- This step is necessary as it extracts the files we need to a temporary path on the server.
- Log out of Sage from all computers
- Browse to C:\Users\<your-username>\AppData\Local\Temp and find the ‘Sage Accounts’ folder with the newest date.
- Go into the ‘Sage Accounts’ folder, then into ‘Packages’
- You must now run the following msi installer files in this order
- Sage50Accounts_DataAccess.msi
- Sage50Accounts_Client.msi
- Sage50Accounts_ODBC_x64.msi
- Sage50Accounts_ReportPack.msi
- If you get an error complaining about the need for C++ runtimes when you try and install the Sage50Accounts_DataAccess.msi – simply install the runtime library on your server.
- Reboot the Microsoft Server Essentials server and run the Sage Accounts icon on the desktop.
- Select the company you want to login as and allow Sage Software to do the data conversion from the old version to new. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour depending on the size of your company data.
- Once the data conversion is done, that should be it, simply install the regular sage installation file you downloaded from Sage on all the other PCs on the network that need access to Sage and you should now be able to login and use Sage on the latest version from PCs and Server.
- This has been tested on Windows Server 2016/2019 Essentials edition. The process should work on Windows Server 2012 Essentials or previous Windows SBS 2011 or 2008.
Credit to:
https://www.netzen.co.uk/2019/02/21/installing-sage-accounts-v24-or-v25-on-windows-server-2016-essentials-or-sbs/
Additional Issues seen during install
For some very strange reason, I was originally able to connect to the Company using the FQDN, but for love nor money I could not get it to work… I could browse to the Company Location using FQDN and there was no issues with DNS (I flushed cache’s etc.). Changing the UNC to use IP Addresses instead of FQDN seemed to work… I can’t explain it though.
