2.10. Checking the Expiry Date of an Evaluation Version of Exchange
Problem
You're using the evaluation version of Exchange and want to know how long you have before you hit the timeout period.
Solution
Using a graphical user interface
Launch the Exchange System Manager (Exchange System Manager.msc).
Expand the Administrative Groups node, then the AG that contains the server whose status you want to check.
Select the Servers container. The righthand pane contains a list of servers in that AG.
Find the target server and look at the date in its Modified column. This date indicates the last time that Exchange setup was run on the server. As long as no one has rerun setup since the original install date, adding 120 days to this date will tell you when the server will expire. This date can also be viewed by looking in the Exchange setup.log file on the root of the Exchange installation drive.
Using the command-line
Change to the root directory of the system drive; on most systems, this will be c:\..
Use findstr to scan the Exchange setup log file for install operations; the example below will give you a list, with line numbers, of where the string Starting Exchange appears (the actual string will be
StartingExchangeXsetuponYatDT, whereXis the build number,Yis the OS build, andDTis the date and time):> type "Exchange Server Setup Progress.log" | findstr /n /c:"Starting Exchange" *.log
Oddly, findstr doesn't understand Unicode characters, so you'll have to preprocess the log files ...