Moving Visual Studio 2026

Question

Moving Visual Studio 2026

Robert Baker 0

A license for Visual Studio Professional 2026 was recently procured through a third party software vendor.
Visual Studio was successfully installed.
The machine (Win11) that Visual Studio was installed on has failed and a new machine procured.

How can Visual Studio be installed on the new machine? (I have the license key for it)

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2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Hi @Robert Baker ,

On the new machine, please download and install Visual Studio 2026 the normal way. Avoid using a backup or hardware tricks like cloning the old hard drive, as that usually leads to "license expired" or "we could not download a license" errors caused by missing registry entries.

Once it's installed, go ahead and enter the product key you have. If Visual Studio reports that the key has expired or reached its maximum number of activations, that unfortunately means the key can no longer be used.

If you're able to reach the vendor, please ask them to retrieve a new key for you. It's usually the easier route since they have the right permissions through their account.

If reaching the vendor isn't possible, you can try retrieving the key by contacting the Visual Studio Sales team. Please note that these requests are reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

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Answer 2

Visual Studio can be installed and activated on the new Windows 11 machine by reinstalling the IDE and then applying the existing product key.

Download and install Visual Studio Professional 2026
- Go to the Visual Studio download source provided by the vendor or use the standard Visual Studio download (bootstrapper) for the Professional edition.
- Run the bootstrapper (for example, vs_Professional.exe) on the new machine with administrator permissions.
- Follow the installer steps to select workloads and complete installation, as described in the Visual Studio installation guidance.
Activate Visual Studio with the existing product key Since the license was procured through a third‑party vendor and you have the product key, activation is done with that key: Option A – Sign in (if the key is associated with a subscription account)
- If the product key was also associated with a Visual Studio subscription, sign in to Visual Studio using the email account tied to that subscription. In that case, no product key is required for online use, and the key is only needed for offline scenarios.
Option B – Apply the product key directly
- After installation, Visual Studio can be unlocked with the product key using the built‑in licensing flow or programmatically with StorePID.exe:
  - StorePID.exe is installed with Visual Studio under the IDE folder (for example, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\18\Professional\Common7\IDE).
  - Run an elevated command prompt and execute:
```
       "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\18\Professional\Common7\IDE\StorePID.exe" AAAAA-BBBBB-CCCCC-DDDDD-EEEEE 09862
```
    Replace AAAAA-BBBBB-CCCCC-DDDDD-EEEEE with the actual product key, including dashes. For Visual Studio Professional 2026, use MPC 09862.
  - If the key is applied successfully, StorePID.exe returns error level 0.

If installation or activation fails, use the Visual Studio installation troubleshooting guidance and support options (installation chat, Report a Problem, or Developer Community) to resolve issues.

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