How do I get the serial key for Visual Studio Express?

Question

I have an improvement on the answer @DewiMorgan gave for VS 2008 express. I have since confirmed it also works on VS 2005 express.
It lets you run the software without it EVER requiring registration, and also makes it so you don't have to manually delete the key every 30 days. It does this by preventing the key from ever being written.

(Deleting the correct key can also let you avoid registering VS 2015 "Community Edition," but using permissions to prevent the key being written will make the IDE crash, so I haven't found a great solution for it yet.)

The directions assume Visual C# Express 2008, but this works on all the other visual studio express apps I can find.

1. Open regedit, head to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VCSExpress\9.0\Registration.
2. Delete the value Params.
3. Right click on the key 'Registration' in the tree, and click permissions.
4. Click Advanced...
5. Go to the permissions tab, and uncheck the box labeled Inherit from parent the permission entries that apply to child objects. Include these with entries explicitly defined here.
6. In the dialog that opens, click copy.
   
   Note that in Windows 7 (and 8/8.1, I think), it appears the copy button was renamed to add, as in add inherited permissions as explicit permissions.
   
   In Windows 10, it appears things changed again. @ravuya says that you might have to manually re-create some of the permissions, as the registry editor no longer offers this exact functionality directly. I don't use Windows very much anymore, so I'll defer to them:

   On Win10, there is a button called "Disable Inheritance" that does the same thing as the checkbox mentioned in step 5. It is necessary to create new permissions just for Registration, instead of inheriting those permissions from an upstream registry key.

7. Hit OK in the 'Advanced' window.

8. Back in the first permissions window, click your user, and uncheck Full Control.

9. Do the same thing for the Administrators group.

10. Hit OK or Apply. Congratulations, you will never again be plagued by the registration nag, and just like WinRAR, your trial will never expire.

You may have to do the same thing for other (non-Visual C#) programs, like Visual Basic express or Visual C++ express.

It has been reported by @IronManMark20 in the comments that simply deleting the registry key works and that Visual Studio does not attempt to re-create the key. I am not sure if I believe this because when I installed VS on a clean windows installation, the key was not created until I ran VS at least once. But for what it's worth, that may be an option as well.

The question is about VS 2008 Express.

Microsoft's web page for registering Visual Studio 2008 Express has been dead (404) for some time, so registering it is not possible.

Instead, as a workaround, you can temporarily remove the requirement to register VS2008Exp by deleting (or renaming) the registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/VCExpress/9.0/Registration

To ensure that this is working beforehand, click Help -> register product within VS2008.

You should see text like

"You have not yet registered your copy of Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition. This product will run for 10 more days before you will be required to register it."

Close the application, delete that key, reopen, click help->register product.

The text should now say

"You have not yet registered your copy of Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition. This product will run for 30 more days before you will be required to register it."

So you have two options - delete that key manually every 30 days, or run it from a batch file that also contains a line like:

reg delete HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VCExpress\9.0\Registration /f

[Edit: User @i486 confirms on testing that this workaround works even after the expiration period has expired]

[Edit2: User @Wyatt8740 has a much more elegant way to prevent the value from reappearing.]

Getting a product key is free. Here is how I did it:

I just downloaded the 2012 Express install ISO image. After install I got the message "This product will expire in 30 day(s). Registration is required for the continued use of Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web."

On that same screen is a register online link. Clicking that I signed in with my live account, updated my profile, and got a registration key.

Visual C# Express 2005 ISO File does not require registration