VS Express 2013 License Issue

Question

I am trying to develop Win 8 Store apps using VS Express 2012. Oddly, when I recently went back to look over the initial "Hello World" apps which I had built in the initial "30 Days to Build a Store App" campaign, these initial apps no longer run in debug. An error message pops up which says:

"Unable to activate Windows Store App

The activation request failed with error 'This app failed to launch because of an issue with its license. Please try again in a moment.'

See help for advice on troubleshooting the issue."

Now after spending quite some effort on developing a real app, I am getting the same error message. Is there something I can do to be allowed to develop an app for more than a couple of weeks?

Answer 1

Make sure your developer license is up to date. It will expire after 30 days. Visual Studio should re-request it for you automatically, but if not then you can do so manually from an elevated powershell prompt:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration

If that doesn't fix it then try building clean to make sure there isn't out of date license information.

--Rob

Answer 2

Make sure your developer license is up to date. It will expire after 30 days. Visual Studio should re-request it for you automatically, but if not then you can do so manually from an elevated powershell prompt:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration

If that doesn't fix it then try building clean to make sure there isn't out of date license information.

--Rob

Did you even try this once?

Because it returns a big fat error:

The term 'Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, o
r operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try
again.
At line:1 char:41
+ Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration <<<<
+ CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration:String) [], CommandNotFoundExc
eption
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

Answer 3

Did you even try this once?

Many times. That line was cut & pasted out of a working Powershell window. Also see Get a developer license for documentation and more details on this process.

Are you on Windows 8 or Windows 8.1? You cannot run or develop Windows Store apps on earlier OSes.

--Rob