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Possible resolution for invalid license data errors after installing Visual Studio 2008

  • Artigo

I have heard from a few customers who have installed Visual Studio 2008 and then seen a dialog appear stating "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required." when attempting to launch the IDE.  The dialog looks like the following:

Pressing OK on this dialog dismisses the IDE and VS 2008 is not usable.

There are a couple of cases where registry data can be orphaned on the machine that causes this type of error.  Unfortunately, running a repair of VS 2008 will not correctly fix the registry values that control this functionality in most cases.

The following steps can be used to resolve most instances of this Invalid license data error message:

  1. Uninstall the Visual Studio 2008 product that you have installed.  You only have to uninstall the main Visual Studio product entry in Add or Remove Programs, and you can leave the other pieces installed by Visual Studio setup (such as the .NET Framework 3.5, MSDN, SQL Express, etc) alone.  The product name in Add or Remove Programs that you want to uninstall is dependent on the VS 2008 edition you have installed.  For example, for the English Professional edition, the product name will be "Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional - ENU"
  2. Click on Start, choose Run and type cmd
  3. Copy and paste each of the following commands into the cmd prompt to clean up orphaned Visual Studio licensing data in your registry: reg delete HKCR\Licenses\21B7CDC0-21A6-4fa8-8CE5-F6A6B2B60839 /f
    reg delete HKCR\Licenses\2AC5863D-48B9-490c-ACD3-B7723A1FEB9E /f
    reg delete HKCR\Licenses\45D0AA33-5564-4a89-BE94-C1972EF4658C /f
    reg delete HKCR\Licenses\46D504D7-557F-4C19-A4DD-6605411EF496 /f
    reg delete HKCR\Licenses\743A8267-4958-460e-B757-7110EED3D53C /f
    reg delete HKCR\Licenses\82198EB8-0FAB-4b2b-98AD-F745A8566EFE /f
    reg delete HKCR\Licenses\AEA64E56-7C97-4a1c-8974-4E0BB4E48FCD /f
    reg delete HKCR\Licenses\B2825A63-A482-4032-80E6-42C9D2C1A78B /f
    reg delete HKCR\Licenses\BA32367F-28F8-4AEA-848D-95AE438B3B9C /f
    reg delete HKCR\Licenses\F2E1F428-5B9A-4a69-B1F4-28C3C644168A /f
  4. If you are installing on a 64-bit OS, copy and paste each of the following commands into the cmd prompt to clean up orphaned Visual Studio licensing data in your registry:
  5. Re-install the Visual Studio 2008 product that you uninstalled in step 1 above

After doing this, the license data should be recreated and correct and allow you to launch the VS 2008 IDE.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 14, 2008
    PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2008/03/14/

  • Anonymous
    April 21, 2008
    PingBack from http://www.edwardotis.net/tech/?p=79

  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2008
    What causes this in the first place? I'm currently experiencing this and it is taking a long time to fix. I'd like to know how to avoid this in the future. Thanks in advance!

  • Anonymous
    May 19, 2008
    Hi Daniel_lidstrom - The only cases I've seen where this error has happened are the following:

  1.  A beta uninstall that didn't work correctly
  2.  Manual changes made to the registry I'm guessing there could be other causes, but I haven't been able to track any others down yet.  I'm sorry for the hassles that this has caused for you.

  • Anonymous
    May 19, 2008
    Thanks for the answer. I have everything up and running again. Actually when I tried to clear the registry entries it turned out they didn't exist, strangely enough. A re-install was all that was needed.

  • Anonymous
    June 21, 2008
    I also have this problem, so I uninstalled Visual Studio and then ran the reg deletes you have above, but they weren't there. Then I reinstalled, and I'm still getting the same error. What else can I do to make this work? I just bought this 3 days ago, and would really like to start using it. P.S.

  1. I'm running Vista Home Premium.
  2. I did not have a beta install of Visual Studio 2008 on here. I did try installing Visual Studio 2003, which wouldn't work at all (and then I found out it isn't supported on Vista, and so uninstalled it).
  3. I did not make manual changes to the registry in this area. I did just change the registry to disable IPv6 and to disable the BROADCAST flag for DHCP because I'm also have really slow issues with using the internet.

  • Anonymous
    June 21, 2008
    I fixed my problem--I had to change the permissions on the HKCRLicenses folder in the registry because I was denied access. I have User Account Control off, but I also didn't run the VS 2008 setup explicitly as Administrator. Maybe that would've helped. Anyway, once I changed the permissions of the folder, uninstalled VS 2008, rebooted, reinstalled, the IDE opened correctly.

  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2008
    Hi Mj79 - Visual Studio uses the same HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTLicenses key on all operating systems, including Vista.  Note that in your comment above, you spelled the word "Licesnes" incorrectly, so maybe that is the cause of not being able to find it?  Also, on Vista, you need to make sure that you run the reg delete commands listed above from an elevated cmd prompt, or else you won't have the necessary permissions to remove any of those keys.

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2008
    I have exactly the same problem with VS 2008 on an Windows Server 2008 x64 system, but the registry keys are not found under HKCRLicenses and HKCRWow6432NodeLicenses. I uninstalled and installed VS several times, but I always get this license-message. Do you might have an idea what I can do?

  • Anonymous
    October 12, 2008
    I have the same problem as jenna_h but I can't figure out how to change the licenses folder permissions has no permissions set so don't have permission to change it :/ any ideas?

  • Anonymous
    October 13, 2008
    Hi Bruce McGoose - If that registry key has no permissions at all, that should mean that everyone has full control for that key and you can add individual permissions as needed.  Can you take a look at the blog post at http://www.brianpeek.com/blog/archive/2007/11/29/weird-vista-registry-issue.aspx and see if it helps solve this permission issue on your system?

  • Anonymous
    October 13, 2008
    Heh I sorted out that.. wasn't the problem I've uninstalled everything checked any registry problems enabled the administrator account and installed it from there but still.. got the same problem :(

  • Anonymous
    October 15, 2008
    Hi Bruce McGoose - I'm sorry but I don't know what to suggest if you've verified that you don't have any of the above registry values and then tried to re-install VS.  You may want to post a question on one of the Visual Studio forums at http://forums.microsoft.com to see if anyone can help you there.  Also, you may want to report a bug on this issue on the Connect site at http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio/.  Finally, you may want to contact Microsoft technical support for more in-depth troubleshooting assistance.  You can find contact information at http://support.microsoft.com. I'm sorry I haven't been able to be more helpful in this scenario.

  • Anonymous
    December 03, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2009
    Before applying the workaround, try restarting your PC first. This somehow corrects the problem on some machines.

  • Anonymous
    January 06, 2010
    Restarting PC first time didn't work, but when I restarted second time it worked... very strange, but i don't mind as I wasn't forced to reinstall VS