VisualStudio Community 2013 prompts to update trial license

Question

I have installed VisualStudio 2013 Community, as per Microsoft documentation VisualStudio 2013 Community is free and will not require any license.

But today I saw a notification on VisualStudio 2013 community IDE prompting me to update the trial license. Is this a bug?

Answer 1

Unfortunately its not a bug but a feature. Its a lie from Microsoft that VSCE shall be free.

My story:
I had to learn it the hard way in my education in school when nearly everyone easily logged into his account: Because I did not ever programmed before, I was blocked since I had to first create a microsoft account and missed half of the class. Registering should be easy, shouldn't it? But if you have to get over 2FA, birthday, captcha, phone number, your first pets name, additional advertisings... - it sucks.

Here are some hard facts:

• Actually the community edition does not cost money but your data - Microsoft tracks your experience in VS and other connected apps. In the last decade we learned that sharing private information is indeed only another way of payment...
• In the past the last real free Visual Studio version was 2005 express (no trial limitation). Windows 10/11 complain about compatibility issues when installing VS 2005 on them, though there aren't any.
• 18 years later we finally got another free version: 2022 Community. It has a preregistered license.
• The algorithm to encrypt licenses in free and paid versions stored in HKCR\Licenses\ in a binary started 2010 and has not changed since 2015 (2013 is an exception).
• For educational reasons some people created "VSLicenseCpp" to reset the trial for 2015/2017/2019. I figured out, theoretically this would be possible for 2010 and 2012 too (not 2013 like it seems). I will not provide the link or usage here, since its against copyright. Anyway, with 2022 it seems there is no reason for using it at all.
• I heard, transferring the logged-in state (files in %appdata%) from one PC to another should work for some versions, but only for a while and at some point it breaks. Chance your account could get suspended, so I wouldn't recommend it too.
• Last version that offers Windows XP support was 2017: You have to use it with platform toolset "Visual Studio 2017 - Windows XP (v141_xp)".

Something likely but non-proofed:
I don't want to spread rumors about unverified things but I have the feeling, making 2022 free was not planned but an accident. The prompt says the license is applied, though nobody had entered a product key. Plus, if registry's encrypted binary gets damaged, 2022 community will tell you about invalid license too. Thats why I can imagine when releasing the dev team from MS forgot to delete this key was used for debugging purposes. Obvious something like that would not be good publicity for the biggest software company so they let it happen as it was a present.

Answer 2

I had to install VStudio 2013 Community yesterday 2017 / 07 / 11 (170711), and I ran into the exact same issue.

Some context (I doubt that it makes any difference, but still):

• I have 7 other VStudio versions (paid / unpaid) installed
• Previously, I had a VStudio 2013 paid edition (I don't remember whether it was Enterprise or Professional) whose trial expired (after 1 month; I didn't bother to extend it for 2 additional months), so I have uninstalled it

I've Googled and found smth similar on [Unity.Forum]: Visual Studio Community 2015 - License has expired ?! (with a nice pic and stuff), which pointed out to: [MS.DevBlogs]: Visual Studio 2015 FAQ - Community Edition is telling me my trial has expired. Do I have to pay for Community edition?:

No, Community edition is free to use. We use the same infrastructure that allows you to unlock VS w/ an online subscription to manage the requirement of signing into Community edition so some of our strings overlap cross these scenarios. Trial here means the period you can use the community edition before you must sign in to fully unlock the IDE.

So, after signing in (it's a simple email address/password sign in to MS), the IDE was unlocked. Staying signed in is not mandatory, I signed out, and the IDE still works.

---

Update

Today (180821), my VStudio license expired again for all 3 Community editions that I have installed.

Below, it's the VStudio 2015 locked version:

After signing in ([MS.Docs]: Sign in to Visual Studio), and optionally clicking "Check for an updated license", everything went back to normal.
Posting some examples:

• VStudio 2017:

  

  Again, no need to stay signed in after performing the license upgrade.

• VStudio 2019:

  

• VStudio 2022 (not yet necessary):

  

Answer 3

I faced the same problem today with Visual Studio Community 2019. The warning disappeared after logout and login again from my Visual Studio account and restart it.

Answer 4

I had the same issue. I signed out of visual studio, and restarted my PC. That solved the issue. Hope this helps

Answer 5

Actually there is a dirty work around without signing-in , I used a free tool called RunAsDate from this link http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/run_as_date.html and set the date in the tool to the installation date. So the license never expires .

Answer 6

Have you signed in to Community? Mean in your editor aswell on the homepage if necessary.

That should update the license and fix that. If you need to sign out after that you can. The license should be good for one year before you need to sign in again.

Otherwise it's a problem that you should address to the Microsoft VS Support not the SO Community