Visual Studio 
How to: Upgrade from Visual Studio Trial Edition 

Trial Editions can only be used for a limited amount of time, usually 90 to 180 days. After that time period has expired, you cannot use the product again without a valid product key.

To obtain a product key

  • Purchase a copy of Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition at a retail location. The product key is listed on the sleeve of the DVD or CD.

    —or—

    Order a Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition product key online at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/howtobuy/. The product key is sent to you in an e-mail message.

To upgrade Visual Studio 2005 Trial Edition

  1. On the Start menu, click Control Panel.

  2. In Control Panel, open Add or Remove Programs.

  3. Select Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional and then click Change/Remove.

  4. On the Visual Studio 2005 Maintenance screen, enter the product key in the section Upgrade to Visual Studio 2005 Professional and then click Upgrade.

See Also

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Community Content

Red-Devile
Please Fix the BUY Link
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/howtobuy/ appears to be missing. I am sure lots of trial users would love it if they could Upgrade before their trial ends. Thanks! x

Thomas Lee
Seconded
Please fix the broken link, it's annoying.
Tags : contentbug

Thomas Lee
Link to How To Buy
I think this is the correct link:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/aa700832.aspx



JoshSommers
Need to purchase a serial number...

Don't want to wait for a product to ship, just want to pay for the serial number, upgrade my trial version and be done with it. I keep getting directed around in circles and it's annoying.

Give me one link to click to buy the serial number please.

Tags : contentbug

NicoVanDamas
Please update this article / relevant information is missing

Granted the upgrade process (should be) painless and is apparently intended to be painless, there is no mention out here about upgrading from an install of VS Pro 2008 90-day trial version to a VS Pro 2008 Academic version.

I had the academic version installed on this very same machine, on a Vista Ultimate installation, and lost my partition over the holiday weekend. After rebuilding my machine and having to use a trial edition of VS over the weekend, I am now unable to use the Product Key for the education version previously installed.

This makes - zero - sense. I dont want uninstall, then reinstall. It is the exact same product. There is absolutely no difference here. So why isnt the license accepted when I use these steps?

Please provide the correct steps, the appropriate link, a link to a KB article, or a phone number that one needs to call in this scenario.

Thanks much - keep up the excellent work.

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Thomas Lee
Need to purchase product key to upgrade from Trial version
Please include a vendor who can send a product key via email, as mentioned in the instructions!

XOCAMB
Upgrade to CD full version
From the instructions given on this page, does that mean that we simply enter the product key of our retail version in the pop-up window that is launched after we choose the Trial Version icon found in the Add/Change programs? Thank you!

Thomas Lee
Academic Version??
Echoing NicoVanDamas; why should academic users have no way up upgrading an install to the academic version of the same program? It's all the same key-based system anyway, so surely it should be possible to extract the key into the upgrade-key box of the installation wizard, when the VS2008.iso file is inserted into the virtual DVD-drive and setup is run? Doing a re-install of VS also doesn't help except clear the memory a little, but the key is the same.

DRoarty
Academic version install...
Dido to the previous comments - what a waste of time. Someone went through the bother of packaging the Academic version and never even mentions this problem? Let alone solve it.
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4.0 student
why did my 90 day trial expire after one day??

why did my 90 day trial EXPIRE after 1 day?????????????? Took me 8 hours to download, cause im out of town on weak dsl connection. And now as i go to use it, the damn things experied. WTF????

Im ready to shoot myself, i cannot miss 2 weeks of assignment cause microsoft trial guys are morons???

what am i supposed to do?

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NixWit
Copy delivered by MSDN do not have product keys ...

I bought a copy of Visual Studio 2005 by MSDN. CD/DVD comes without product key. Product key is preset on CD/DVD, so how do I get a valid product key to upgrade trial installation?

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dmenke
Visual Studio page appears to be broken

The visual Studio home page is broken while viewing in IE 7.
The display is messed up, the links are inoperative or have the same problems, and there are errors generated on the page messages in the status bar. Bad Link is:
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/professional/default.mspx

Tags : error page msdn

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