Update license information to remove the trial version of Visual Studio 2008 in Windows 7

Workaround

Like many and many of us have stumbled upon and were forced to upgrade to 2010, there is no way anymore to enter your license information to install VS2008 on Windows 7. That is a shame. Fortunately someone found a way to activate the dialog that is normally found in the setup.exe to enter your legitimate license key. Here is how :

- Download and install AnVir Task Manager Free (has a built-in windows inspector)
- Load the VS2008ProEdition90dayTrialENUX1435622.iso into your favorite CD/DVD emulator
- Run the installer, stop at the screen where you see the three options  "Add or Remove Features", "Repair/Reinstall", "Uninstall Microsoft Visual Studio 2008"
- Launch AnVir Task Manager as an Admintrator
- Go to the Application tab
- Right click Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Setup - Maintenance Page and select Detailed Info
- Go to the Windows sub-tab
-  Expand Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Setup - Maintenance Page, you will see a couple of items with four named one at the bottom
-  Expand the unamed item just above the four bottom ones that are named one, this is the current dialog
-  Now right-click all item and make sure they are both Enabled and Visible
- Magica!!! Now you have the place to enter your serial number  

Troubleshooting

You could come across file permission error when running the installer normally. This could be because Visual Studio was installed by an administrator on your system (i.e. another user). You just need to give full permission to these files for your user:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin\x86_amd64\vcvarsx86_amd64.bat

Otherwise if it still fails, try to copy all the DVD files to your hard-disk in a folder. Right-click the executables in the main folder and make sure they are "Run as administrator", then re-launch the autorun as Administrator.