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Myria
Junior Member
USA
11 Posts |
 Posted - Nov 21 2025 : 03:06:50 AM
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I've had to deal with two licensing processes this last week, and I feel that the licensing process needs some big improvements.
First, at work. My employer has a big multi-user license that's up to date to 2027 or something like that. When Visual Studio 2026 came out, I installed it, and wanted to use Visual Assist with 2026. (Nice that you were able to get a working version out soon after the surprise release!)
My computer's license file had expired, so the new version wouldn't run, even though we are current. I filed a ticket with our developer experience assistant. She gave me new license files to try, but they kept not working because they were apparently the still expired one.
This went on for a few days, and in the meantime, the trial expired and I had to uninstall and install an old version, which is annoying because VAX takes 10 minutes to install during which you can't use Visual Studio.
It turned out that she was giving me the wrong license file, an older one with an older expiration date. Why did she have trouble finding the right one? Well, they're all named the same thing: "named_123456.slip". Why can't they be named "named_123456_exp_2027-01-23.slip" instead to avoid this problem?
In most companies, development computers have network access. Why can't VAX have a mode where it automatically downloads new licenses from the license server that customers run? It would let us upgrade without needing to go through this ordeal every time we want a newer version than the last license file we installed on our development machine. Sure, environments where development computers don't have internet access are a thing, but that path can still be supported while still improving the experience for the majority.
Second, my experience at home. I bought a personal subscription license tonight for home programming projects. It took me half an hour to figure out how to get the license key to work. Apparently, the forum accounts are not the same as the license portal accounts, which confused me for a bit. Then the instructions were spaghetti, making it hard for me to figure out which set of instructions applies for personal licenses and which clicks are needed where.
So I finally get into the license portal, and the serial number I just bought is not listed. Hmm. There's also no add button anywhere. Nope, you have to go back to the VAX options dialog and enter the serial number and license portal login there.
Not the best experience for $100 (or for our corporate licenses, whatever they paid).
Melissa |
Edited by - Myria on Nov 21 2025 03:08:43 AM |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
19268 Posts |
Posted - Nov 21 2025 : 07:15:32 AM
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Apologies for this rather terrible experience all round. I will pass this on.
Most of this isn't something I can personally comment on, but the installer taking 10 minutes, that is really not normal! I install and reinstall VA a LOT, so I would be painfully aware if that was at all normal.
If you are installing for basically every supported version of Visual Studio on the same machine, at once, yes, the installer will take a while. But by this I mean the machine where I have VS2026, VS2022, VS2019, VS2017, VS2015, VS2013, VS2012, VS2010 and VS2008 all installed! I rather doubt you have anything close to this many versions of Visual Studio installed.
The only other good reason I have seen for the installer being very slow is firstly launching from a network drive with a slow connection, or the installer says it is waiting. If it says it is waiting, this is because either Visual Studio is open in the background, or one of the Visual Studio processes was left running in the background, and we are waiting for it to close, or trying to kill it. But in these situations you should get a message telling you we are trying to sort things out. Did you get any such message from the installer? |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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Myria
Junior Member
USA
11 Posts |
Posted - Nov 21 2025 : 1:55:30 PM
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The installer takes 2 minutes or so per Visual Studio version, and I have 2017, 2019, 2022, 2026 installed. It didn't give any messages other than that it was installing to each of the versions.
Thanks for forwarding my missive about the license stuff! |
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Improvements to licensing process
