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Is there a way to change name of company to which the Visual Studio 2008 is registered without reinstalling it?

Mladen Janković
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    I think this should not be closed as "not programming related". Having some configuration problem with a popular IDE (with D meaning development :P) seems to be programming related for me. – OregonGhost Oct 14 '08 at 10:30
  • Beat me to it. So this is not OK but 'What's your favourite colour of programming chair?' type questions are?! This is the start of the downward curve towards uselessness here. – Fake Jim Oct 14 '08 at 10:32
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    Reopened. It is border line, but the people have spoken. – GEOCHET Oct 14 '08 at 11:00
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    I don't think this question is borderline at all. Its a non subjective question to a programming IDE. – Giovanni Galbo Oct 14 '08 at 11:33
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    For the record, I am a software developer and I think this is a VERY important question for software developers, because it's something that we as software programmers (and ONLY software programmers) need if we start new software projects for others to consume. Thank you guys for reopening this and getting this answered, and the rest of you are losers. :) – Jon Davis Mar 13 '10 at 22:03

5 Answers5

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This should have the answer you are looking for : http://bytes.com/forum/thread635503.html

For the CompanyName in AssemblyInfo, it's $registeredorganization$ which uses value from registry key value from HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\RegisteredOrganization.

Giovanni Galbo
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    Thanks and just to add that Visual Studio on 64-bit versions of Windows use different registry key (HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\RegisteredOrganization). – Mladen Janković Oct 14 '08 at 11:58
  • And here's the link: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elguille.info%2FNET%2Fvs2008%2Fplantillas_vs2008_organization.aspx&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=es&tl=en – Mladen Janković Oct 14 '08 at 11:59
  • There is an extra step required before these values appear in VS, see Stuart Thompson's answer. – TravisO Jun 28 '13 at 16:38
  • In case you have trouble getting Mladen Janković 's comment to work on a windows 64 machine, double check the spelling of the path. Especially note that the correct path has "Windows NT", not "Windows". After I got that path right, it started working as expected for Visual Studio 2019 for me. – Luc C Jul 08 '20 at 06:54
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For what it's worth I wrote up a set of instructions to do this here: http://blog.stuartthompson.net/2010/03/changing-visual-studio-registration-information/

I didn't find a full solution until I learned about the devenv /setup step and SplashInfo key.

Stuart Thompson
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1

For those who are interested, this is how you do it in Visual Studio 2012.

  1. Open Registry Editor (Start->Run->type “regedit”->press enter)
  2. Find the following key: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config\Registration\UserName
  3. Change it’s value to the desired name
  4. Navigate to the following folder: C:\Users{YOUR_USER}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0 (replace the placeholder with your own username)
  5. Delete the file vs000223.dat – this is actually a JPG file containing the splash screen, you can change it’s name to see it for yourself
  6. Start Visual Studio, and it magically recreates the file with the modified name in it!
reinder
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    this doesn'T work here.... (please also note that the method is in different blogs with different numbers...) – Offler Nov 21 '12 at 14:52
  • It actually is a PNG file. The filename was also different here, but I tried to open any *.dat file with IrfanView, and with one it came with the message it was a PNG file with the wrong extension. This did show me the splashscreen. I removed it and now it works! Thanks :) – Geerten Dec 20 '12 at 08:57
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This baffled me as well, several times. I'd installed VS2005 before and just had to go through this headache again as I'm rebuilding my notebook. The installer for VS2005Pro never asks me my organization, just a user name. Then it defaults to the notebook manufacturer. Since I do not work for the manufacturer of my notebook, I think it might be trouble for me later if I shipped stuff out with that manufacturer's name embedded on it.

AND I'd already intuited that it ought to be tweakable from the registry, AND even gone so far as to export the whole registry and done a global search-and-replace from notepad, AND cleaned up those straggling keys that were locked when I reloaded my edited registry.

No effect.

Giovanni Galbo in his answer wrote to reference the article: http://bytes.com/forum/thread635503.html and also mentioned the key it borrows from if there isn't already a Registered Organization.

But what if "RegisteredOrganization" isn't present? It still defaults to "".

ADD the key. Set the value yourself. Fixed.

I assume this works just as well with most other versions of VS, including VS2008.

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A quick suggestion, bring up RegEdit and search for the existing company name string. Then attempt to change it.

Jim Blackler
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