Visual Studio 2012 "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required"

Question

I have a newly built Windows 8 VM with VS 2012 Premium running on it, when I try open any sln file I get the following modal pop up error

Visual Studio 2010 Shell

Invalid license data. Reinstall is required.

I can open the sln's if I open up VS and then do project open, this is really annoying, any ideas how I fix it?

*Note I have done a VS repair and it didn't solve it...and I never had any VS RC release on the machine, all new build with s/w downloaded from the MSDN

Cheers

Answer 1

I encountered the same exact error when I created a solution with a full version of Visual Studio 2012 Professional on one machine and then tried to open the solution file with a copy of Visual Studio 2012 Express on a different machine. I got the error when double-clicking the solution file, but not when loading the solution into an already opened instance.

I fixed the error by opening the solution file (.sln) with notepad and changing the line that says Visual Studio 2012 to say Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop.

After that, I was able to double-click to open the solution file on the machine that has Express installed.

Answer 2

I'm using VS 2013. I fixed this by right clicking the .sln and setting the Open With parameter to visual studio 2013 and not VS version selector or VS 2010.