[visual-studio] How do I fix an "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required." error in Visual C# 2010 Express?

I've tried to install Visual C# 2010 Express edition onto my PC, but whenever I try to run it, I get a error message.

Invalid license data. Reinstall is required.

I've already tried reinstalling it, and the message persists.

OS is Vista Home Premium. I already have VC# 2008 Express installed.

I have the same problem with Windows 7 Pro. Have tried everything suggested by the Microsoft people, including uninstalling, cleaning up, reinstalling both from the web installer and the VS2010 Express iso - with the same result every time.

To say it's frustrating is an understatement and the disinterest from Microsoft in fixing what appears to be a common problem (you can find lots of search engine 'hits' for the problem, none for a solution) is quite unbelievable.

Since this is virtually a virgin Win7 install, the only conclusion is that MS have broken their licesing checks again (why check for a license on a free product?).

Edit: Following further investigation I have concluded that the advice given by Microsoft is useless and does not attempt to diagnose the problem. It simply assumes a corrupt installation source. I believe that the problem is in fact corrupt permissions/ownership of registry keys. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Licenses and subkeys needs to be owned by SYSTEM with admins having full access. On my affected system the owner cannot be displayed and no permissions are shown when viewed by admin.

I don't have the definitive fix for this so far, as I cannot adequately edit the permissions for the affected registry keys.

Re-installing Windows is an almost certain fix, but also an extremely drastic one.

Analysis: as per the previous correct note by reece (and the original workaround author), I used ProcessMonitor to see what devenv.exe tries to do and fails. Unfortunately, it was attempting to read a number of reg keys which were not under the Licenses node (so it wouldn't have been enough to take ownership of the latter with subinacl). Furthermore, even after taking ownership, the affected keys still yielded "ACCESS DENIED". Doing it as Administrator was equally useless. Plus, Visual Studio didn't fall for any date change nonsense either.

Solution - Don't try this at home :D though: I downloaded pstools and ran psexec -i -s regedit to get System privileges, then I changed permissions on the entire HKCR node to allow Everyone to Read (:P what can I say, viva el comandante).

I want to point out that adding "Everyone" to have read permissions on HKEY_Classes_Root did fix this issue for me.

I am not sure exactly what permission is needed, but this "worked for me" ... YMMV

I just encountered this problem on a virgin install with a system that has a bad clock battery (when I turn off the power, it resets the date/time. Syncing to time.windows.com again allowed me to run VS2010 successfully.

I get this error only when trying to open older solution files. For instance, I've got VS2013 installed and this error message pops up when I double click on a VS2010 solution file.

Getting rid of it is so simple:

• Launch VS2013

• Open the old solution file by clicking
  "File->Open->Project/Solution..." from the menu (or simply by
  pressing Shift+Ctrl+O)

• Save the solution with the new format by clicking "File->Save Solution As..." and overwrite the old file.

It appears that this has been reported as a bug, but has been closed as "Not Reproducible". One suggestiong from the Microsoft supporter is to redownload and reinstall:

Please try downloading the complete ISO from http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/#2010-All, mount it as virtual drive. Then execute Visual C# setup from the ISO media and select an option to remove the product. Once the Visual C# has been uninstalled, please try installing it again from the ISO media.

It sounds a bit far fetched to me, but you might want to give it a try.

If that does not help you, I would suggest that you either post a new bug report to Microsoft or vote to reopen the existing one (I am not sure if/how this is possible).

An another solution I have found to work is the one mentioned Mac by over at SuperUser: https://superuser.com/questions/651261/how-do-i-fix-an-invalid-license-data-reinstall-is-required-error-in-visual-s

When simply reinstalling the Visual Studio 2010 shell doesn't work, he points out that installing it through SSMS 2010 can solve the problem:

I was able to resolve my issue without making any manual changes to the Windows Registry by installing SQL Server Data Tools 2010, which is also free and includes the Visual Studio 2010 Shell.

You don't have to go through the entire install process. I cancelled the process when it was done installing the shell and it worked our fine.

Installing SQL server data tools for visual studio 2010 did it for me! SSDT has an VS2010 IDE along with it, which overwrites the required registry entries. You can find SSDT here.

I'm having this problem with Visual Studio 2015 installed.

ramonsantana over at forum.unity3d.com had the solution for me: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/if-anyone-is-having-visual-studio-shell-2010-invalid-license-data-reinstall-is-required.298824/

Copied here for reference

Use regedit go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and look for Visual Studio.DTE Since i have Visual Studio 2015 CTP installed i have 3 DTE, one is VisualStudio.DTE, the other Visual StudioDTE.10.0 and VisualStudio.DTE.14.0 Go to VisualStudio.DTE.14.0 ( or whatever version of Visual studio you have installed) and click CLSID.

Copy the Default (Double click Default and Copy the key inside), now go back to Visua Studio.DTE and double click the Default there and paste the key you just copied.

Almost there

On VisualStudio.DTE go to CurVer and double click the key there to Edit it. Change the 10.0 in the end to 12.0 or 13.0 or 14.0, depending on what version of Visual Studio you have and you are done.

I had this issue while installing dynamic ax setup in VM, while installing it was showing me to 'licence is not valid, Reinstall visual studio shell 2010 version', so i uninstalled the visual studio shell 2010 version and its following component and tried to install again the AX admin it worked.

To everyone who has internet connection. Don't mingle with your registry it's just a waste of time. Set your CMOS clock right then just click on the button that say's "Obtain registry key online" fill up the form(two fields are only required) then the registry key would show up to your screen then just copy and paste it. then everything works fine. sorry I can't post any images I still need to earn more points...

My prolem: -VS works fine, but when I create new Solution Setup and Deployment it make Setup file but when I run this Setup file, it say: "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required." -subinacl do not work.

My PC: -OS:Windows 7 64bit. -Visual Studio 2012

My way: -Close Visual Studio -Run regedit. -Pull down HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT -Looking for Licenses -Right click on Licenses -> click Permissions... -> click Addvanced -> click User you want edit -> click Edit -> choose This key and subkey -> check all Allow: Full Control, Query Value, SetValue, Create Subkey, Enumerate Subkeys, Notyfy, Create Link, Delete, Write DAC, Write Owner, Read Control... -> check Apply these permissions to objects... -> click OK -> click OK -> click OK -> Close Registry Edit -Start VS -Hope this help

I had this problem when installing a new SQL Server 2012 standalone Server.

Cause: When installing SQL Managemnt Tools it will install the VS Shell. It seems like this is all you need but this ist not enough! (it actually shows it will install VS) Strangly the path and the application are shown in windows put you can't open them without the error.

Fix: You need to also install "SQL Server Data Tools" via Feature Add with the SQL-Server.iso

Hope this helps someone... i took me quite a while.

I just right-clicked, and opened with Visual Studio XXXX (in my case 2015). Then save it. Done.

Believe it or not, I have found cases where this problem occurred due to a build error when the build error was due to an error in xcopy in the pre-build events.

We had this problem at a colleges computer, and after trying everything here we set to forget it and fix the error from xcopy. When this was fixed the Visual Studio 2010 shell error stopped popping up, for some reason.

If you're here from Google and are experiencing this issue with GFI MailEssentials's config export tool, check to make sure you aren't trying to open WebMon.SettingsImporterTool.exe.xml instead of WebMon.SettingsImporterTool.exe

If you have "hide common file extensions" enabled, you will see the .exe but not the .xml

Hey This was my problem with my Visual basic net 2005 This is How i got it solved:

1.Click start :-> type run (Or press win+r) 2.Type regedit 3.Click HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT 4.Click Licenses 5.Double click (Default) 6.clear all text written in Value data field 6.Press Ok 7.Run again Microsoft visual studio

While none of the above solution worked for me (else than running the application with an other username),Renaming the application folder in %appdata% fixed the porblem for me. "C:\Users...\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\MS Project"

I have faced this problem when installing the Visual studio 2010 - C# express using the local administrator account, then trying to register the application using another account that doesn't have Admin privileges, due to corporate polices this account can’t edit in the Registry by any means, so suddenly that’s how I figured out how to solve this issue I open VS 2010 as a local administrator then entered the registration key, and it is worked , I don’t understand how do that Microsoft itself didn’t mention this solution or even try hard to investigate or solve this issue

I have had this EXACT problem with VS2010 Professional Trial / Evaluation download. I can provide clear and concise steps to reproduce:

1. Set your system clock ahead by 1 day (oops!)
2. Install the trial software.
3. Set your system clock back to the correct date.
4. Start VS2010, you will receive the vague message indicating "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required."

In my case, the resolution was quite simple - set the clock back ahead to the wrong date. The next day, I was able to set the clock back to the correct date and continue using the product.

Based on other answers to this question, it would appear there are numerous reasons that you could receive this message. This specific issue is most likely to be encountered by someone with a "virgin" install of Windows since it is not so difficult to set the clock incorrectly when setting up a new computer and then fix it later (and if you fix the clock hours after installing the product, it might be hard to put it all together and realize what happened).

Hope this helps someone else.

Just happened to me with a new install of Visual Studio 2010 ultimate in a new computer.

This new computer had the internal time correctly set, but the date was set to one day late. I installed Visual Studio 2010 with the incorrect date. Then, I noticed of the incorrect date and changed it by sync'ing with a NTP server, and from that moment Visual Studio 2010 would not work... so I'll have to stop using Visual Studio 2010 until DateTime.Now > installationDate.

I had this issue but I was able to resolve this by right clicking and using Run as Administrator. This boots up the program just fine.

I was stuck for several days with the same problem. Investigating the registry i found several keys in HKCR were i was denied access even as adminstrator. Among these keys were the Licences key. Tried a lot of things to resolve this access problem but could not fix it.

Finally i worked around this problem with a reinstall of Windows 7 - choosing the Upgrade option when prompted to choose between upgrade or a fresh install. Had to reinstall video drivers but all my programs and user accounts survived.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Installing-and-reinstalling-Windows-7

After the upgrade i have access to the HKCR\Licenses again and Visual Studio 2010 starts as expected.

It was not the clock for me, and all the hours spent re-downloading and reinstalling were a waste of time (except for the last one, of course....).

Also, for some odd reason, just adding Read permissions to the HKCR node using psexec -i -s regedit did not work by itself.

To fix my problem on Windows 7, I made sure (using psexec -i -s regedit) that my login account had full control permission over every node in the registry and that the everyone group had read permission over every node in the registry, and did all of the steps in the following link (rebooting after each step):

http://windows.microsoft.com/troubleshootwindows7sp1

This is probably overkill, but after spending 10+ hours trying to get this working, I am just happy it works... Good luck!

I met the same problem yesterday.And I fixed already. Please follow the steps:

• Run setup.exe again; Change or Remove Microsoft Visual Studio 2010; Upgrade license Key (Enter new license key); Complete.

GOOD LUCK !

Background: Visual Studio 2012 Pro installed by Administrator account. As "Joe User" (member of Win 7 Users group, but NOT Adminstrators) I got the error message. On reading this forum I concluded this is a generic error message. Steps to fix: As an adminstrator, open HK_CLASSES_ROOT. Open context menu on the Licenses subkey Select Permissions... Set Full Control for all users.

Now log on as "Joe" again. Voila!

Next, as Administrator change the permission on HKCR/Licenses back to read only for Users.

Two hints for developers. If you can develop and run an application as an ordinary user, then presumably your poor clients don't need admin rights to run it either.

Don't leak security information in "helpful" error messages. Microsloth are probably following their own advise and giving a vague and unhelpful error message here.

I have no idea why changing the permission to FC then back again to the original setting worked. I can only assume the Visual Studio writes something to that key the first time it runs.

This may also occur if you are trying to invoke an xml file instead of the exe application.

I got the problem when instelled MS SQL 2012 with IngegrationService, the MS Visual Studio 2010 (Isolated) was installed from sql installer .

This VS returned error: Invalid license data. Reinstall is required.

I've fixed the problem by reinstalling SSDT with MS VS 2012 (Integrated) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/jj650015

I am using Visual Studio 2013 and I have the same issue but it occurs when I try to open a solution that was made using Visual Studio 2010.

The solution for me is to open the solution file (.sln), using notepad and change this line:

[# Visual Studio 2010]

to this:

[# Visual Studio 2013]

I had this problem and finally got passed it. I tried the solutions above to no effect. (I set my license keys to open permissions, set my clock forward, etc.) After two days I gave up...

In the end, I installed VS 2012 Express, which could handle VS 2010 solutions but could not compile 2010 code (without a COFF error). After finding this article on requiring VS 2010 to be installed to compile 2010 solution in VS 2012, I reinstalled VS 2010 even though I assumed it wouldn't work on its own. I tried opening 2010 anyway and it worked!