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I have installed Visual Studio 2015 with an .ISO that works for a colleague. On opening the application I've signed into my MSDN account which has an Active subscription.

However I'm presented with the following splash screen:

enter image description here

License: Prerelease software This license has expired.

I've no option but to close at this point (pressing the Close button closes Visual Studio completely) – even though I can generate a license key via MSDN I have no way of entering it.

Any ideas?

silkfire
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m.edmondson
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  • what did your MSDN representative tell you about the issue? – Claies Jul 30 '15 at 13:33
  • No contact with them so far, I'm just reaching out to see if other have experienced (and perhaps resolved) this – m.edmondson Jul 30 '15 at 13:34
  • http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2014/03/19/visual-studio-online-best-practices-troubleshooting-issues-with-the-quot-eligible-msdn-subscriber-license-type.aspx – Claies Jul 30 '15 at 13:34
  • I got this with after creating custom [Push-Button Reset](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/commercialize/manufacture/desktop/push-button-reset-overview) [provisioning package](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/commercialize/manufacture/desktop/siloed-provisioning-packages) and trying to run VS 2015 Community among other stuff [Single Instanced](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/commercialize/manufacture/desktop/compact-os). – mlt Aug 26 '16 at 21:26
  • Possible duplicate of [VS 2015 license has been expired](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31551574/vs-2015-license-has-been-expired) – mlt Aug 27 '16 at 01:21

6 Answers6

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Go into Programs and Features and repair the installation of Visual Studio 2015. After the installation is repaired you should be able to open the program successfully.

I had this same issue today and these steps worked for me.

mp-mi
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    After VS 2015 installation completed, I received message that several packages failed installation. After re-installing, packages failures did not re-appear. When opening Visual Studio 2015 and logging in, I received a message that "license expired" which led me to this post. As the answer suggests, "Repairing" the VS installation resolved the issue. – moke Aug 19 '15 at 19:24
  • @moke I had exactly the same experience, and I was the only person in my office to have it. My workstation had VS 2010, 2012, and 2013 installed before, while all of my colleagues only had either 2012 or 2013. I uninstalled all of them before updating to 2015, but something must have messed up along the way despite the uninstall processes completing happily. – talrnu Aug 31 '15 at 14:26
  • We installed VS2015 on 5 machines. 2 of them failed with this error. As far as I can tell the 2 that failed had an old version of internet explorer and needed 8 important windows updates. Not sure if those things are related but they might help someone. The repair install fixed the issue. – craftworkgames Sep 03 '15 at 23:10
  • I have same issue, but I haven't Repair option, only Remove – Alexey Markov Oct 08 '16 at 22:04
  • This resolved a issue when I was opening Microsoft SQL management v17 studio I'd connect to the database and get this error. – Minerbob May 20 '17 at 16:22
4

For me it was a matter of Time / Timezone error. My computer time was set to 06:27 when the actual time was 14:27.

Setting the time and timezone to the correct values made VS work again.

karlingen
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1

[EDIT]:

This is the only thing I eventually got to work having this problem with Visual Studio Community 2017!

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/reset-windows-10-pc

Below is the original post of stuff that DIDN'T end up working for me:

-

I had the EXACT same problem with Visual Studio 2017!

"Prerelease software. This license has expired"

I tried everything above AND a bunch of things you'll probably find BELOW this search result in Google (ie. people at Microsoft can't seem to give a fix either!). DO NOT do what I did and attempt to uninstall all your VS related apps, and .NET & Visual C++ distributions, and then repair/reinstall VS, etc! NOT NEEDED (like some people have suggested) and a complete waste of time!

  • FIX --- Remove the offending product key!
  1. Open register editor
    • Start Menu -> Search regedit -> Right-Click -> Run as Administrator
  2. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\5C505A59-E312-4B89-9508-E162F8150517 and delete it
    • Back it up first, if you want...
  3. Execute a repair installation of VS 2017

BOOM! Jump for joy! I was stumped by this for a few days setting up an old machine as a new dev machine... apparently, I had an out-dated license in there! Hope that helps anyone else that shows up here!

[Edit] Seems to have reverted after restarting the machine and now the problem persists...

Tried theses too:

Bret Royster
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Close the IDE, go and create your Visual Studio Online free account. (https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/what-is-visual-studio-online-vs - hope the link works) Open IDE, and click "Check for updated license". .

Login with that account, and hopefully this will work, as with my VS - "License downloaded successfully".

The License is syncing across all VS and devices.

RozaCG
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I solved this problem getting a new Microsoft account at http://www.microsoft.com and sing in Visual Studio.

Juan Pablo Venditti
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In short, the solution for me consisted of two parts: Removing the license in the Windows Registry Manager and turning off Visual Studio Update in the Task Scheduler.

Go to your registry editor (Windows => "Regedit.msc", run as administrator), then look for the folder named "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\4D8CFBCB-2F6A-4AD2-BABF-10E28F6F2C8F". In case your instance of this prerelease software license issue is caused by the same version I had a problem with (VS15), this could be your folder with VS2015 licenses. This might be a differently named folder if your prerelease software was of a different version, in that case, find that first before continuing.

Delete this folder. If you have trouble with this due to permissions, try to follow these steps:

  1. Right-click the aforementioned folder in the Registry Editor.
  2. Click "Permissions...", ignore error message if it pops up.
  3. Click "Advanced", again ignore the error if it appears.
  4. At the top of the window it should say "Owner: ...", press Change which is next to it.
  5. In the Text Box, type your Windows Username (or 'Everyone')
  6. Press "Check Names...", if Windows can find it, it will refactor your text.
  7. Press "OK"
  8. In the Advanced Security Settings window, press apply. User(s) should be added to the permission entries.
  9. Press "OK" again to take you out of the Permission window.
  10. Once more, right click the folder to edit permissions.
  11. This time, the users with permissions should appear. For your user, allow full control by pressing the checkbox.
  12. Press "OK" To finalize the permissions. You should be able to delete the license now.

Once the License folder is deleted, check in your Task Scheduler whether Visual Studio has installed a constant Update task. It did for me, which is why after each re-install on my PC, Visual Studio decided to download the broken license again. Disable or Remove this task and you should be good to go. If the problem still persists, try doing this in a different order, or check whether somehow the License did not once again appear on your system. I also recommend using the Visual Studio Uninstaller tool on github.

edit: I've found so far these keys to be related to the problem, remove these: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\9E449D9C-67BF-4c4d-87F0-A939C7C75E47 HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\CFAA42DF-1E22-471a-81A7-D62F9A3C925E HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\41717607-F34E-432C-A138-A3CFD7E25CDA HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\4250E830-6AC2-11cf-8ADB-00AA00C00905

Matthijs van Wijngaarden
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