How to Change the "licensed to" user in VS2012

Question

I am trying to change the user shown on the VS2012 splash screen next to "licensed to" - its an OCD thing.

I am on Windows 8 Pro with VS2012 Professional.

I have found some help online that tells me to:

Open Registry Editor (Start->Run->type “regedit”->press enter)
Find the following key: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config\Registration\UserName
Change it’s value to the desired name
Navigate to the following folder: C:\Users\{YOUR_USER}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0 (replace the placeholder with your own username)
Delete the file vs000223.dat – this is actually a JPG file containing the splash screen, you can change it’s name to see it for yourself
Start Visual Studio, and it magically recreates the file with the modified name in it!

So I have followed these steps and changed the registry keys (including the Windows NT ones) and then it say's to delete the vs000223.dat file. However, this file doesnt exist, within the C:\Users{YOUR_USER}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0 folder there is only one dat file - ObjBrowEx.dat - but deleting this does nothing - it gets re-created. I have done a search and there is no vs000223.dat

I have even tried running devenv /setup - but that doesn't help.

I have deleted the splashhash registry binary entry, but that didnt work either.

I am clearly missing something, or doing things in the wrong order.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Alt>Tools>Folder Options > View > SHow Hidden Files and folders.

Look in "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0".

Answer 2

Through the registry. I just tested and it worked on Windows Pro 8.1.

1. Open Registry Editor (Start->Run->type “regedit”->press enter)

2. Find the following key: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config\Registration\UserName

3. Change it’s value to the desired name

4. Navigate to the following folder: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0 (replace the placeholder with your own username)

5. Delete the file vs000223.dat (hidden file) – this is actually a JPG file containing the splash screen, you can change it’s name to see it for yourself

6. Start Visual Studio, and it magically recreates the file with the modified name in it!

EDIT : Path of the file vs000223.dat` updated. It changed since Windows 8.

Source here.