How to change registered owner and registered organization for Visual Studio 2008 and 2010

Here are steps to change registered owner and registered organization for Visual Studio 2008 and 2010

• Open registry editor (type 'regedit' at Run command, clicks OK button, and select 'Yes' if you have UAC confirmation).
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion (or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Note\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion on Widows x64).
• Change 2 string values RegisteredOwner and RegisteredOrganization as you expected (create them if they don't exist).
• Restart Windows and open Visual Studio, you will see new registration info.

After doing above steps, if you still see old registration info, please add these steps:

For Visual Studio 2010:

• Delete vs000223.dat from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\. It's splash screen for Visual Studio 2010.
• Run Visual Studio 2010, now you should see a blank splash, there is no registration info, don't be worry.
• Close Visual Studio 2010, then open it again. Now you should see new registration info.

For Visual Studio 2008:

• Delete vs000223.dat from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0. It's splash image for Visual Studio 2008. Now if you run Visual Studio 2008, you will see a strange splash 'Visual Studio code name 'Orcas'.
• Run 'devenv /setup' from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ (or C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ on Windows x64).
• Open Visual Studio 2008, now you should see new registration info.

Enjoy your Visual Studio with your own registration info.

Note: The directory paths here are on Windows 7, so if you use XP or Vista, they're maybe different.

Free Notepad alternatives

I'm a long-time user of Notepad++ until the day I start to work on MSBuild scripts. The extension of MSBuild scripts usually is PROJ (but you can name it yourself) and actually it's a XML file which describes about build process. The reason why I need to find another Notepad alternative to replace Notepad++ is it cannot detect the format of the file, so when I open a MSBuild script, I need to select XML from Language menu to activate highlight syntax feature manually.

Took a look around, I found 2 free tools to try: Notepad2 and Programmer's Notepad.

I tried Notepad2 first. At first, I like it. The GUI looks nice, it runs fast and didn't consume much memory. It can detect the format of my MSBuild script and use highlight syntax feature to display it. But it lacks one important thing, it doesn't have tabbed multiple document interface. So I moved to Programmer's Notepad.

IMO, "Programmer's Notepad" isn't a good name, I don't like it very much. Maybe "RockStar's Notepad" is much better, just kidding :-D Programmer's Notepad is a bit slower than Notepad++ and Notepad2 when it loads my MSBuild script, it blinks before showing the content. The good things are it can automatically detect the format of MSBuild script to highlight it and it also has a tabbed multiple document interface. The bad thing is GUI it's not look nice, but it's not too important.

I stick with Programmer's Notepad this time and enjoy editing my MSBuild script. But once Notepad++ is fixed to detect the syntax, I will come back with Notepad++.

Update: One feature, I forgot, Programmer's Notepad automatically generates closed tag for XML when you type '>', even sometimes it doesn't work properly.