Visual Studio 2015 license won't update

Question

Hi -- I'm revisiting a project in Visual Studio 2015, and I'm getting license update failures. It either simply displays "Your license has gone stale and must be updated. Please make sure the internet is connected, then check for an updated license to continue using this product.", or an 0x00000001 error. I've had a valid Visual Studio 2015 Community license for years.

Clicking on the "Check for an updated license" button does nothing visible.

I've got Edge as my default browser, version Version 93.0.961.52, and Windows 10 build 2004. Both of these have been updated since the last license renewal.

As per a previous question I've found on the MSDN forum, I added the following entries to my Trusted Sites and IE Compatibility View within Edge:

Microsoft.com
Live.com
https://app.vssps.visualstudio.com/profile/view

They're all accessible; I'm not running a VPN or other proxy. I get the same results displaying my Visual Studio profile whether I'm in Internet Explorer mode or not.

In the ActivityLog.xml for startup, I find the following license settings:

<description>Client rights determined: {"CurrentClientRights":{"ActivityId":"17dcc398-2f21-4f75-9aa1-199d6cf45e21","AuthorizedVsEdition":0,"AuthorizedVsEdition2":200,"CrtokenDaysToExpire":-1,"DaysSinceCreation":368,"DaysToExpire":-1,"IsLicenseGood":false,"IsSubscriptionBased":true,"IsTrialLicense":false,"LicenseDescription":"Visual Studio Community 2015","LicensedUserId":"<redacted>-<etc>-<etc>-<etc>-<etc>","LicensedUserName":"jon.blum@orexresearch.com","LicenseSource":1,"LicenseSource2":1,"LicenseStatus":-4,"LicenseType":17,"LicenseUrl":"","LicensingAccount":"","MayUplevel":false,"ReleaseType":1,"RightsDaysToExpire":2147483647,"RightsStatus":10,"SubscriptionChannel":"Free Program","ClientRightsMetadata":{"SubscriptionChannel":"Free Program","NonLocalizedLicenseDescription":"VSCommunity","LicenseUrl":"","ExpirationDate":"\/Date(1631841651000)\/"}},"CurrentLicenseSource":1,"CurrentLicenseSource2":1,"IDEUserClientRights":{"ActivityId":"17dcc398-2f21-4f75-9aa1-199d6cf45e21","AuthorizedVsEdition":0,"AuthorizedVsEdition2":200,"CrtokenDaysToExpire":-1,"DaysSinceCreation":368,"DaysToExpire":-1,"IsLicenseGood":false,"IsSubscriptionBased":true,"IsTrialLicense":false,"LicenseDescription":"Visual Studio Community 2015","LicensedUserId":"<redacted>-<etc>-<etc>-<etc>-<etc>","LicensedUserName":"jon.blum@orexresearch.com","LicenseSource":1,"LicenseSource2":1,"LicenseStatus":-4,"LicenseType":17,"LicenseUrl":"","LicensingAccount":"","MayUplevel":false,"ReleaseType":1,"RightsDaysToExpire":2147483647,"RightsStatus":10,"SubscriptionChannel":"Free Program","ClientRightsMetadata":{"SubscriptionChannel":"Free Program","NonLocalizedLicenseDescription":"VSCommunity","LicenseUrl":"","ExpirationDate":"\/Date(1631841651000)\/"}},"PIDClientRights":{"LicenseSource":0,"LicenseSource2":0,"IsSubscriptionBased":false,"DaysSinceCreation":-1,"LicenseType":2,"AuthorizedVsEdition":0,"AuthorizedVsEdition2":200,"DaysToExpire":-1,"IsLicenseGood":false,"LicenseDescription":"30 day trial (for evaluation purposes only)","LicenseStatus":-1,"LicenseUrl":"","MayUplevel":false,"LicensedUserId":"00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000","LicensedUserName":"","LicensingAccount":"","ReleaseType":1}}; Account identity provider: MSA</description> 

When I rolled back to a snapshot from about ten days ago, VS opened briefly before the license tried to refresh. The only differences in the ActivityLog entry were the following fields:

"CrtokenDaysToExpire":8,"DaysSinceCreation":357,"DaysToExpire":8,"IsLicenseGood":true,
"LicenseStatus":5

So it looks like it was a fairly standard license expiry-and-renewal, the client just isn't able to refresh from the server. Any idea for where else I should look for why the "Check for an updated license" link isn't doing anything that I can see?

Answer 1

Hi @Jon Blum ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A!

Please have a try with the following steps:

1. Try to sign in to your Visual Studio with a different account
2. Clear cache and cookies on the browser
3. Close all instances of Visual Studio
4. Delete all files of %localappdata%.Identityservice and %localappdata%\Microsoft\VSCommon\OnlineLicensing\VisualStudio 14.0
5. Relaunch your Visual Studio and sign in your account

Sincerely,
Anna
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