Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows desktop installation

1. Most old products that passed mainstream support might experience significant changes on how they are supported by Microsoft before end of life. In your case, VS 2013 passed that day on April 9, 2019 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/visual-studio-2013
2. The initial user experience of VS 2013 is that upon installing you get a month of free trial and you need to request a product key free of charge by registering via a Microsoft link so as to continue using it after that trial period. For some unknown reason (maybe your network connection, ISP, or on Microsoft side) your machine does not seem to be able to connect to that registration page.

Using such an old product has its own risks, as almost all technologies/frameworks it supports are also out of mainstream. The code/app you write there might not be able to run very well on newer platforms.

Since VS2015, Microsoft decided to end the feature limited Express edition and ship a much more powerful Community edition for individuals and small business owners,

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/

and they are much easier to activate if you try VS2022.

The software was marked as needing NO PRODUCT KEY. Since it was proposed for download as an Express edition, I supposed it was a lifetime license without any registration or signing in. I doubt the internet link would still be valid.

Anyway... just after the software refused to work any longer, the links were broken....!!! Should I have tried to register before that month (trial??) ???? Would the link have been "alive"??? I don't know. Should I try to reinstall and retry....????? I DON'T KNOW.... Maybe it left some cookie (or some hidden value in the registry) that will prevent me from reinstalling?????

The sad part of this is that I enjoyed it. It worked fine until it told me my trial period was over. The reason I chose that version is that it's not too bloated and that I installed it on Windows 7 Professional.

It's not a FAIR policy to give download to useless products without precise information. I ignored it could be so vicious.... (sigh)

JP

Hi @Jip Mart , 

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A!

Are you experiencing this error “Sorry, we ran into a problem - The online service is not available” when extending the trial period?

Please refer to the similar issue and try to configure .NET Framework to support strong cryptography to use TLS 1.2 or enable TLS 1.0 from registry.

Sincerely,

Anna  

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