CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsvisual-studio-2012
user728584
user728584

Reputation: 2135

Visual Studio 2012 "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required"

I have a newly built Windows 8 VM with VS 2012 Premium running on it, when I try open any sln file I get the following modal pop up error

Visual Studio 2010 Shell

Invalid license data. Reinstall is required.

I can open the sln's if I open up VS and then do project open, this is really annoying, any ideas how I fix it?

*Note I have done a VS repair and it didn't solve it...and I never had any VS RC release on the machine, all new build with s/w downloaded from the MSDN

Cheers

Upvotes: 6

Views: 15799

Answers (4)

jessehouwing
jessehouwing

Reputation: 115037

It looks like the .sln extension is owned by "Visual Studio 2010 Shell" a minimal version of Visual Studio that ships with products like SQL Server and Office to provide support for add-in development without any other features. Since this is a minimal version, it's unable to load any project type that ships with Visual Studio Express, Professional or above.

The same may happen when you have Visual Studio Express installed next to a full version of Visual Studio.

This may happen when you install an older version of Office or SQL Server after having installed Visual Studio. The old installer will hijack the extension.

To repair this problem:

  1. use the "Open With" option of Windows and select the "Visual Studio Version Selector" as your default action.
  2. Or open the "Default Programs" option in Windows, look up the .sln extension and make sure it uses the "Visual Studio Version Selector" as default: enter image description here
  3. Or locate Visual Studio 2012 in the Programs and Features window of Windows and chose "Change", the Visual Studio installer will pop up, chose "Repair" to have it repair the file associations and any other problems that may arise by installing Visual Studio versions in reverse order (it may for example mess up the MsBuild directory as well).

Remember that when Visual Studio 2010 was released, it could not yet know what Visual Studio 2012 would change, as such, it's best to install versions of Visual Studio in the order they were released. This may sometimes prove difficult, as other products may install Visual Studio versions without you knowing.

Upvotes: 1

Ben
Ben

Reputation: 43

I'm using VS 2013. I fixed this by right clicking the .sln and setting the Open With parameter to visual studio 2013 and not VS version selector or VS 2010.

Upvotes: 2

Wayne Bloss
Wayne Bloss

Reputation: 5570

I encountered the same exact error when I created a solution with a full version of Visual Studio 2012 Professional on one machine and then tried to open the solution file with a copy of Visual Studio 2012 Express on a different machine. I got the error when double-clicking the solution file, but not when loading the solution into an already opened instance.

I fixed the error by opening the solution file (.sln) with notepad and changing the line that says Visual Studio 2012 to say Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop.

After that, I was able to double-click to open the solution file on the machine that has Express installed.

Upvotes: 11

Nalan Madheswaran
Nalan Madheswaran

Reputation: 10572

I have faced the same problem. When I set the system Date and Time to the current Date and Time, The Problem solved by itself.

Upvotes: 1

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