How to change Visual Studio 2012,2013 or 2015 License Key?

Question

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 Uninstalli

Answer 1

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