How do I change a regular installation to a service installation?

[Billy Greer]

I unintentionally installed Confluence as a normal application when I intended to install it as a service.  A decent amount of content has already been added to the instance.  If I uninstall it, can I reinstall and point to the existing database?  If not, what is the best way to accomplish this task?

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi Billy,

Welcome to the Atlassian Community.

Have a look at Start Confluence automatically on windows as a service, it describe how to install the service.

[Billy Greer]

This did not work for me.  I'm guessing it has more to do with an unstable machine than anything else.  I do not have a site backup but I do have a backup of the SQL database that was used on the old machine.  I have installed Confluence on a new machine (Windows Server 2016).  The new machine has an instance of SQL Server with two databases.  The database of the new empty site called Confluence and the restored database from the old machine.  I'm guessing the old database has all of the content that I created.  Can I simply point Confluence to the old database and expect everything to be available or is it more complicated?  Also do I just make the change in the confluence.cfg.xml file?  Is there only one confluence.cfg.xml file?

Thanks

[Billy Greer]

I pointed Confluence to the old database and I do not see my old Spaces.  :(

[Billy Greer]

The spaces and content are in the database but they do not show up in the site.  Am I missing something minor?

[Mikael Sandberg]

Here are the instructions to change the database configuration used by Confluence.