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Just installed Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 and now I see this annoying red notification telling me I need a developer licence for Windows Store and Windows Phone - which I do not need.

enter image description here

Once I click dismiss all, it comes back next time I load Visual Studio, the same notification I dismissed. In other words how many times will it tell me I need a licence? So my point is how do I stop displaying the red notification.

[edit] Actually it's prompting me every so often not just every visual studio restart... as I think someone has mentioned in one of the comments.

Rob
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    I have the same question. I don't want a developer license and don't want the annoying notification either! – Ruud van Falier Nov 14 '14 at 09:39
  • Agreed it's annoying. If any of you find a way to stop it I'd like to hear it. I'm getting the same on VS2013 since applying various updates. – SteveH Nov 14 '14 at 13:38
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    You can send feedback within VS. It's adjacent to the red notifications icon on the screenshot above. Tell them _directly_ it's annoying. I have, and I'd encourage others to do the same. – DJH Nov 14 '14 at 17:18
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    Are you guys using R#? If so, try suspending R# and see if you still get the red notification. It seems that R# may be involved on my machine. – Wade Nov 16 '14 at 01:31
  • I had bigger problems, including this one. [What I did to resolve it](http://stackoverflow.com/a/26958727/304683)...hope it works out for you too (and at least in my case, didn't have to disable/suspend `Resharper`). – EdSF Nov 16 '14 at 15:47
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    @DarrenHale - Great suggestion. Also recommend including a link to this SO article, and a screen shot of VS next to this SO post. – Philip Pittle Nov 17 '14 at 12:17
  • I have to say that I find the feedback 'Send a Smile/Frown' so patronising. What? Are we twelve or something? – Paul Jun 25 '15 at 08:33

1 Answers1

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LATEST UPDATE (Nov-21): We have now released a patch for this bug. You can download it from here.

I'm leaving the rest of this answer as is but there should no longer be a need for any workaround once the patch linked to above has been applied.

ORIGINAL ANSWER: I'll start by apologizing and confirming we've got at least one bug here (if not more). There are several of us actively investigating this on our side. We don't yet know the full extent of the problem though so it would be great to get some additional information from anyone who's currently running into this.

The intent was to show a notification to users working on Windows or Windows Phone Store apps. It was not something that should be coming up for users not doing Store development.

The most promising workaround so far is to:

  1. Close the currently open solution (if there is one loaded)
  2. Dismiss the notification
  3. Close Visual Studio

You shouldn't see the notification again in subsequent VS sessions until you do something that causes the Store related functionality to load again (e.g., create or load a Store app project).

If this doesn't make it go away, please respond and we'll try to work with you to get more details on what could be causing it to continue to appear for you.

UPDATE: If the above workaround doesn't work for you (e.g., ReSharper users), I've got another one that should at least provide a respite from the notifications for about a month at a time:

  1. Make sure the critical notification is currently active (i.e., red notification).
  2. Close all open instances of Visual Studio.
  3. Open up File Explorer and navigate to the %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\Notifications directory.
  4. Open the Notifications_Active.xml file found in in a text editor.
  5. Find the notification element referring to the developer license.
  6. Change the value of the Severity element to 0 instead of 2.

This should make the red alert no longer kick in for this notification as long as you leave the notification active (i.e., do not dismiss it).

zastrowm
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GusP
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  • I'm unable to try your suggestion at the moment, but I can give you some more information. I uninstalled the Windows Store and Windows Phone options (via repair on VS in uninstall programs) to see if it would stop the notification, but it didn't. It always display when I open a `.sln` (it's happened for WPF, WinForms and console projects). If I only open VS, I don't get the notification. This is on a Windows 8 machine, VS 2013 Ultimate. I haven't seen the notification display again until starting a new instance of VS and then opening another `.sln`. – DJH Nov 15 '14 at 19:53
  • The intended behavior and workaround described above does not work at all for me. I arbitrarily get the notification when working for hours in a single solution that has no Windows Store or Windows Phone projects (just class libs, ASP.NET projects) - it just pops up from time to time. Also, I started a new solution for another small project, and it pops up when I create an empty VS solution and each time I add a project, all of which are simple C# class library projects with no external dependencies. When I dismiss, close VS and reopen VS and open my solution, the red notification reappears. – Wade Nov 15 '14 at 23:53
  • Thanks @Wade. Here's some more info in an attempt to clarify what could be triggering the problem. From what I've seen in the code on our side, the licensing notifications get created in one of our libraries that should only get loaded when Store related functionality happens (e.g., create/open a Store app). Once loaded, this library gets called on every single project load (regardless of project type) that happens for the remainder of that VS session. The key to the workaround is to prevent that library from loading and inserting itself in the project load path. – GusP Nov 16 '14 at 00:36
  • Something’s causing that library to load and, as you and others have mentioned, it’s apparently not just the obvious create/open of a Store app project given some of you aren’t doing Store development. The notification itself (e.g., if you leave the license notification and close VS) actually causes the library to load the next time VS starts. Hence why it’s important to dismiss that notification specifically right before closing VS. There’s probably something else that’s causing it to load though; that’s what I’m trying to figure out. – GusP Nov 16 '14 at 00:37
  • I welcome any more specifics from anyone who has tried the workaround above and still gets the notification. You can either post them here or email me directly at gusperez at microsoft.com. In the meantime, we’re continuing our investigation on our side to understand the full extent of what needs to get fixed. – GusP Nov 16 '14 at 00:37
  • @gusp I am using VS 2013 Ultimate with Update 4. Note that on my machine, I have never created or otherwise opened a Store or Phone project, only class libs and ASP.NET projects. I'll email you some reliable steps to reproduce as they are too long to post in the comments here. – Wade Nov 16 '14 at 01:14
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    @gusp I just performed an experiment and it looks like ReSharper 8.2.3 is causing it for me. When I suspend R#, the steps to reproduce no longer work. When I resume R#, the issue also resumes. The issue may be related to an interaction between VS and R# or is just R# by itself. Anyone else seeing this? – Wade Nov 16 '14 at 01:28
  • That is quite possibly what's going on. We'll investigate with ReSharper and see what options we have at that point. Assuming this turns out to be the case, the workaround steps in my answer above should work for anyone *not* using ReSharper. If anyone runs into this problem that isn't running ReSharper and my workaround doesn't fix things, please feel free to reach out to me. – GusP Nov 16 '14 at 03:10
  • Thanks for acknowledging - yep have more (bugs): https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/1029189/after-update-4-has-been-installed-such-packages-are-failed-to-load and my woes are beyond annoying prompts: https://plus.google.com/102054487224209127233/posts/NS1vAN6apPf so hopefully a resolution is released before we break things even more by the mishmash of suggestions and workarounds on the internets. Thanks! – EdSF Nov 16 '14 at 05:20
  • It might be something to do with resharper and stylecop perhaps? Look at resharper options and stylecop at the bottom – Rob Nov 16 '14 at 07:25
  • Re-running the update and `Repair` [worked out for my situation](http://stackoverflow.com/a/26958727/304683) which included this issue (which was the least of my problems). Hope this gives guidance to what went wrong... – EdSF Nov 16 '14 at 16:18
  • @EdSF - I re-ran the VS2013 Update 4 installer and chose Repair but the issue is still occurring for me. In fact, after I open a solution and the notification appears, I dismiss it and then it reappears almost immediately and I have to dismiss it again, then it stays away for a little while but eventually returns. Also after dismissing it, closing VS and reopening VS then opening a solution, it starts all over again. – Wade Nov 16 '14 at 18:45
  • @Wade Did you actually "renew" (at least once)?..I did. Perhaps that would get rid of it? Hth... – EdSF Nov 16 '14 at 20:00
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    @gusp, the update workaround does help make the red go away. So far so good. – Wade Nov 16 '14 at 23:49
  • @EdSF not sure what should be "renewed" so I probably didn't do it. :-) – Wade Nov 16 '14 at 23:49
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    @gusp - No change on my end (but using R#). Do all instances of VS need to be closed when editing `Notifications_Active.xml`? Also, would it help to also edit `Notifications_Archive.xml`. On a side not, could I uninstall Phone / Store development from my VS instance? I didn't install these components when I originally installed VS, but they seem to magically be added when installed Updates. – Philip Pittle Nov 17 '14 at 12:23
  • @PhilipPittle, not positive but I'd recommend closing out all instances of devenv.exe before editing the file. `Notifications_Archive.xml` shouldn't need any tweaking for this workaround. – GusP Nov 17 '14 at 15:17
  • Using VS2013 Ultimate Update 4 + R# 8.2.1, no Store options or projects, and getting the notification. Tried the updated workaround with R# loaded; exited/Reloaded VS2013, the notification was back. The Severity value in the Notifications.Active.xml file had been reset to 2. Suspended R#, exited/reloaded VS2013, and the Notifications_Active.xml remained untouched. Is R# forcing the notifications to be refreshed? – SWalters Nov 18 '14 at 15:16
  • @SandraWalters, can you try again and make sure there are no other instances of Visual Studio running? Jorge Iván Burgos Aguilar made an edit to add step #2 and that actually may be the same thing you're running into. – GusP Nov 19 '14 at 15:29
  • @GusP, this wasn't the issue, only one VS2013 instance running. Strangely though, after setting it back to 0, a second time, the notification stayed informational-only until I generated a code map. Immediately the notification went back to critical. Still the only instance running. – SWalters Nov 24 '14 at 19:56
  • @SandraWalters, have you installed the patch yet? That should fix it all up now. Thanks for the follow up. – GusP Nov 24 '14 at 19:58
  • @GusP Serves me right for not reading the update to the answer fully... The patch took care of the problem after I manually reset the severity level again. Thanks! – SWalters Nov 24 '14 at 20:50
  • The patch hasn't worked for me. Closed all VS, installed patch KB3018885, manually set severity to 0 and dismissed the notice. VS2013 Ultimate Update 4 ver 12.0.31101.00 R# 8.2.1. Other ideas for ReSharper users? – Alien Technology Feb 22 '15 at 20:15
  • @AlienTechnology, best I could suggest is to just try the new [CTP 6](http://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/visual-studio-2015-ctp-vs) instead which we just released a couple days ago. – GusP Feb 26 '15 at 03:06
  • @GusP: Just out of interest, why can't we turn notifications off? I find it rather invasive and unnecessary for what I do. – Paul Jun 25 '15 at 08:26
  • @Paul: We've honestly still got a lot of work to find the right experience that customers don't find to be annoying in anyway. We have the feature though because there are plenty of scenarios where having a way to get the customer's attention is super useful to them. E.g., providing warnings that their Visual Studio license (not to be confused the developer license this bug was about) is about to expire is a notification we're probably never going to want someone to disable. We're making a fair number of improvements in VS 2015, but we still have more to go. – GusP Jun 26 '15 at 22:16
  • @Paul: Lastly, we have plans for different kinds of information coming through notifications and many of those are clearly relevant/useful to customers. I realize it can sometimes seem to be a way to advertise, but that's not at all our intent and is more of a point in time thing. – GusP Jun 26 '15 at 22:19
  • @GusP: Can I place my order for 2015, in that case, to have the ability to get rid of these annoyances, please? – Paul Jun 29 '15 at 08:44
  • @GusP: Just out of interest, if I deny access to the files mentioned in the `%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\Notifications` folder, will that prevent notifications from popping up? – Paul Jun 29 '15 at 08:57