How to change Visual Studio 2012,2013 or 2015 License Key?
I have a Copy of Visual Studio 2012 Pro on my machine with a Serial key that i'm no longer suppose to use because i have to use another one. My problem is i keep Uninstalling Visual studio but the Registration information is still there after re-install and i cannot figure out which registry path i have to delete (i deleted a few) with no luck.
Is there a easy way to remove tha reg info or swap my keys?
Thanks
Solution 1:
I had the same problem and wanted to change the product key to another. Unfortunate it's not as easy as it was on VS2010.
The following steps work:
Remove the registry key containing the license information: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\77550D6B-6352-4E77-9DA3-537419DF564B
If you can't find the key, use sysinternals ProcessMonitor to check the registry access of VS2012 to locate the correct key which is always in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses
After you remove this key, VS2012 will tell you that it's license information is incorrect. Go to "Programs and features" and repair VS2012.
After the repair, VS2012 is reverted to a 30 day trial and you can enter a new product key. This could also be used to stay in a trial version loop and never enter a producy key.
Solution 2:
For those who will need to remove product key from Visual Studio 2015:
- remove registry key
HKCR\Licenses\4D8CFBCB-2F6A-4AD2-BABF-10E28F6F2C8F - repair Visual Studio installation
That's it, now you can change the product key if necessary.
Solution 3:
For me, with Visual Studio 2013, it wasn't enough to remove the license key and perform a repair (the repair restored the license key instead of reverting to a trial, and running it without the repair (after deleting the key) claimed the license had expired but wouldn't let me enter a new key).
I had to:
- Discover what license key Visual Studio was looking for in the registry with Process Monitor (it was
HKCR\Licenses\E79B3F9C-6543-4897-BBA5-5BFB0A02BB5C) - Completely uninstall Visual Studio 2013 (save CurrentSettings.vssettings first)
- Delete the license key from the registry by hand in regedit
- Install Visual Studio using the publicly available web installer (which doesn't have any baked-in license key -- it installs a 30-day trial)
- Enter my new license key
- (Re-)install updates (Update 1 at this time)
- Restore settings by importing the backup I made of CurrentSettings.vssettings