SharePoint 2013: The license state for the current server doesn't match the farm's license state

PROBLEM/SCENARIO:

I needed to add a new server to our SharePoint 2013 staging environment. Upon running the SharePoint Configuration Wizard to connect to an existing farm, I received a Configuration Failed message:

Failed to connect to the configuration database.

The license state for the current server doesn't match the farm's license state.


I found a SharePoint 2010 blog post here that gave some insight. Essentially that post talked about reviewing the Properties column in the Config database and reviewing the Registry.

The properties in the database showed four (4) GUIDS:

<sFld type="Guid">ccd2be5b-dcb6-4fbe-8087-3e5c82244473</sFld>

<sFld type="Guid">52d457f6-ae45-4221-9bc5-1912a8861c00</sFld>

<sFld type="Guid">9ff54ebc-8c12-47d7-854f-3865d4be8118</sFld>

<sFld type="Guid">b7d84c2b-0754-49e4-b7be-7ee321dce0a9</sFld>

The registry also showed the same:

I figured that some of these should not be on there or that the new server did not have something. After some more digging I found a post on the MSDN forums here.

What that told me was that I was in the same boat and that there was some residue from SharePoint 2013 Preview version.The answer there was to rebuild the farm --- ahhhh. I didn't feel like going through all that trouble. That has got to be an easier way!!!


SOLUTION:

I found a way to determine which SharePoint products were installed by using the PowerShell code posted on the PhoeNIXBird Networks site here.

I figured out that all of the products that started with 2015 needed to be removed.

Therefore, I used msiexec /x along with each identifying number to remove the old Preview versions:

I had to repeat the process on each server that was currently in the "corrupted farm". I performed the same initial commands to make sure all of the old products were removed:

Next, I decided I should refresh the installed products on the farm just in case. That was also PowerShell but since it uses SharePoint cmdlets, I opened up the SharePoint Management Console to run the refresh:

This doesn't appear to do anything and is pretty quick.

Next, for good measure, I ran the SharePoint Configuration Wizard on the servers that I just removed the old Preview version from.

I was then able to run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard on the new server and have it join to the farm!!! Much less work than rebuilding the entire farm!!!