Visual Studio 2015 - Prerelease software. This license has expired

Question

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

Answer 1

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