Invalid License Data Reinstall Is Required

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So what we should install or reinstall to fix the invalid license data issue. Non of the above, you need to install ' SQL Server Data Tools ' Click here to get the link to to download.

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.

Invalid license data reinstall is required visual studio 2010

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:

    4. reg delete HKCRLicenses21B7CDC0-21A6-4fa8-8CE5-F6A6B2B60839 /f
    reg delete HKCRLicenses2AC5863D-48B9-490c-ACD3-B7723A1FEB9E /f
    reg delete HKCRLicenses45D0AA33-5564-4a89-BE94-C1972EF4658C /f
    reg delete HKCRLicenses46D504D7-557F-4C19-A4DD-6605411EF496 /f
    reg delete HKCRLicenses743A8267-4958-460e-B757-7110EED3D53C /f
    reg delete HKCRLicenses82198EB8-0FAB-4b2b-98AD-F745A8566EFE /f
    reg delete HKCRLicensesAEA64E56-7C97-4a1c-8974-4E0BB4E48FCD /f
    reg delete HKCRLicensesB2825A63-A482-4032-80E6-42C9D2C1A78B /f
    reg delete HKCRLicensesBA32367F-28F8-4AEA-848D-95AE438B3B9C /f
    reg delete HKCRLicensesF2E1F428-5B9A-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. reg delete HKCRWow6432NodeLicenses21B7CDC0-21A6-4fa8-8CE5-F6A6B2B60839 /f
    reg delete HKCRWow6432NodeLicenses2AC5863D-48B9-490c-ACD3-B7723A1FEB9E /f
    reg delete HKCRWow6432NodeLicenses45D0AA33-5564-4a89-BE94-C1972EF4658C /f
    reg delete HKCRWow6432NodeLicenses46D504D7-557F-4C19-A4DD-6605411EF496 /f
    reg delete HKCRWow6432NodeLicenses743A8267-4958-460e-B757-7110EED3D53C /f
    reg delete HKCRWow6432NodeLicenses82198EB8-0FAB-4b2b-98AD-F745A8566EFE /f
    reg delete HKCRWow6432NodeLicensesAEA64E56-7C97-4a1c-8974-4E0BB4E48FCD /f
    reg delete HKCRWow6432NodeLicensesB2825A63-A482-4032-80E6-42C9D2C1A78B /f
    reg delete HKCRWow6432NodeLicensesBA32367F-28F8-4AEA-848D-95AE438B3B9C /f
    reg delete HKCRWow6432NodeLicensesF2E1F428-5B9A-4a69-B1F4-28C3C644168A /f

  5. Re-install the Visual Studio 2008 product that you uninstalled in step 1 above

Visual Studio 2010 Shell Invalid License Data

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