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I installed the Evaluation Edition of SQL Server 2012 and it has expired. I uninstalled the trial, rebooted, and installed the Developer Edition. It said it installed successfully; however, when I open SQL Server Management Studio it won’t open and I get the message:
Evaluation period has expired.
You need to completely remove all SQL Server components from the machine when the trial has expired. Just removing the engine leaves other timebombs in place, as you’ve found out. So you will need to:
I posted a pretty lengthy blog post about this process, as it can get pretty messy and not everything can be removed gracefully from Control Panel (at least that was my experience with 2008 R2).
Basically you may need to run the following command…
…for every SQL Server-related GUID you find in the following registry key:
See the post for a lot more details (just remember that GUIDs, and names that contain the version, changed between 2008 R2 and 2012, so don’t take everything on-screen literally):
https://sqlblog.org/2010/10/25/fun-with-software-uninstalling-sql-server-2008-r2-evaluation-edition