Is Visual Studio Community a 30 day trial?

Question

I installed the supposedly free VS Community 2017 on my PC and 30 days later I get this message from VS saying that my license has expired.

License? Expired? I thought the community edition was "free forever" therefore sporting the "community" tag. What's going on? I tried signing in with my outlook.com account but it says "something went wrong" and comes back to the same screen.

How do I get a fully free version of VS 2017 so I can work on my FOSS projects?

Answer 1

Sign in and the 30 day trial will go away!

"And if you're already signed in, sign out then sign in again." –b1nary.atr0phy

Answer 2

To bypass "30days left must go online to sign-in", sign-in once to Microsoft account, you'll get %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VSCommon\OnlineLicensing folder that you can copy to offline PCs.

Answer 3

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Information provided below is for educational purposes only! Extending a trial period of Visual Studio Community 2017 might be ILLEGAL!

So let's get started.

Registry key of interest: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\5C505A59-E312-4B89-9508-E162F8150517\08878. I assume the 08878 subkey may differ from installation to installation (why not, isn't?). I have tested only on my own one. So check other subkeys if you can not match proper values described below. Binary value stored in that key is encrypted with CryptProtectData. So decrypt it first with CryptUnprotectData. Bytes of interest (little-endian):

• [-16] and [-15] is a year of expiration;
• [-14] and [-13] is a month of expiration;
• [-12] and [-11] is a day of expiration.

Increasing these values (preferable the year :) ) WILL extend your trial period and get rid of a blocking screen! I know nothing of such a tool that allows to edit encrypted registry values, so my small program in C++ and Windows API looks like:

RegGetValue
CryptUnprotectData
Data.pbData[Data.cbData-16]++;
CryptProtectData
RegSetValue

Actual language doesn't matter if you have access to registry and crypto functions in your language. I'm just fluent in C++. Sorry, I do not publish a ready-to-use code for ethical reason.

Answer 4

In my case, I already was signed in. So I had to sign out and sign in again.

In spanish Cerrar Sesion is sign out.

Answer 5

VS 17 Community Edition is free. You just need to sign-in with your Microsoft account and everything will be fine again.

Answer 6

Another answer, when you have a machine where you do not have an internet connection and cannot log in, is here - https://dimitri.janczak.net/2019/07/13/trial-period-reset-of-visual-studio-community-edition/.

The files are on github - https://github.com/1Dimitri/VSCELicense/releases/tag/1.0.

From the readme file:

Original Module Usage

1. Download/clone this repository

2. Run PowerShell.exe as an Administrator

3. Import module:

   Import-Module -Name X:\PATH\TO\VSCELicense
   
   

Usage :

Get-VSCELicenseExpirationDate -Version VS2019

Set-VSCELicenseExpirationDate -Version VS2019 -AddDays 10

Answer 7

For VS2019 I was able to signup with my github account:

Then it will send password to your email and you will be able to sign.

Answer 8

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Information provided below is for educational purposes only! Extending a trial period of Visual Studio Community 2017 might be ILLEGAL!

You have the same effect when You remove all files from HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\5C505A59-E312-4B89-9508-E162F8150517. Run "Visual Studio Installer" and chose option "repair". Now You have new 30 days of trial. But You lost all configuration in Your VS.

Answer 9

A. Sign in if you are not signed in already.

B. If signed in already, click the link Check for an updated license on the account settings page.

C. "We could not download a license. Please ensure your accounts are authenticated." If this message is encountered, sign out and sign back in. You can either sign out by clicking on the Sign out link and then signing back in by clicking on the account icon in the upper right corner of Visual Studio. Or you can just click the link Reenter your credentials. This link is a good indication that your account is not synced up with Microsoft servers and the error message is right in that your account is not authenticated and the license cannot be refreshed.

Once you have signed back in and your account is successfully authenticated, you will see that the "Reenter your credentials" link is gone. This is a good indicator that you can now go ahead and refresh the license. If it does not do that automatically you can click the Check for an updated license link once again. This time you will see a short confirmation message and your associated email address will be listed.

Signing in is inevitable if you want to get rid of this annoying warning. But even if you have always been signed from day one, you may still run into this warning. Based on my experience, this may happen if you have recently changed the password for your account, or you have added 2FA (two step verification) to your account, or you have reset the recovery code for the account and with it the app passwords. It may also have to do with inactivity or the recent changes Microsoft has been making to the "sign in experience" for Microsoft accounts.

Whatever the reason may be, signing in, or signing out and then signing back in again appears to be the best treatment for this annoyance.

Answer 10

I had this problem. Signing in or pressing the "Check for an updated license" link did not work for me. My solution was to restart Visual Studio, try again (sign in and check for license). Restart Visual Studio, try again. I had to do this several times and then it worked! (I also tried pressing the "File" menu that is available for a short period of time before the annoying request window appears again.) Maybe you just don't get connected to the server or the server itself doesn't update its database fast enough.

Answer 11

In my case it was most trivial solution - I just needed to run Vistual Studio as Administrator.

It's trivial thing, but i didn't see this mentioned anywhere.

Answer 12

I'm using Visual Studio Professional licensed over the MAPS Action Pack subscription. Since the new version of the Microsoft Partner Center one have to add the subscribed user to the partner benefit software.

Partner Center->Benefits->Visual Studio Subscriptions->Add user

After that one have to sign out and reenter the credentials in the account settings of VS.

Answer 13

Remember, if you are inside of private red with some proxy, you must be logout and relogin with an external WIFI for example.

Answer 14

For my case the problem was in fact that i broke machine.config and looks like VS couldn't have a connection I've added the following lines to my machine.config

<!--
<system.net>
 <defaultProxy>
  <proxy autoDetect="false" bypassonlocal="false" proxyaddress="http://127.0.0.1:8888" usesystemdefault="false" />
 </defaultProxy>
</system.net>
<!--
-->

After replacing the previous section to:

<!--
<system.net>
 <defaultProxy>
  <proxy autoDetect="false" bypassonlocal="false" proxyaddress="http://127.0.0.1:8888" usesystemdefault="false" />
 </defaultProxy>
</system.net>
-->

VS started to work.

Answer 15

No, Community edition is free, so just sign-in and rid the warning. For more detail please check following link.
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/support/community-edition-expired-buy-license/

Answer 16

My solution:

1. Find your VS installation location, if not found, right-click on the icon, select properties, and then open the file location.
2. Note that click DDConfigCA.exe, Clicking on this file will immediately flashback, then restart VS, it's ok!