November 04, 2014

Downgrading from Visual Studio 2013 Premium to Professional - The easy way

Legacy blog post from blogger platform about how to downgrade your visual studio

Downgrading from Visual Studio 2013 Premium to Professional - The easy way

This post is outdated and only exists for historical reasons

Due to a miss-understanding of the MSDN Subscriber download site, I accidentally downloaded and sequentially used up the trial of Premium. This was a really annoyance as the internet I am currently on doesn't take to kindly to downloading 600mb .iso's. It was going to take 12+ hours to complete!

This was unacceptable as I had work I had to get done. So I tried the other option, the web installer (traditionally I avoid these as I am a hoarder of installers so I don't have to re-download). This is where the awesomeness happened... It didn't have to download anything! (well at least it doesn't look like it had to) on the installer, the acquiring progress bar when through allot faster than it should have and it only took 10-20 minutes to install, which from previous memories is the same install time as via the .iso!

This speed increase (from 12+ hours to 20 minuets) could be caused by either:

  • A. The network policies favor the method the web installer used (don't think so)
  • B. The download speed on the .iso from Microsoft is capped at 100kb/s (I hope not) OR
  • C. It re-used my premium's install data to not have to download everything again (What I think happened as it downloaded to the same folder as Premium and I couldn't launch it until I uninstalled Premium)

Then all I had to do was uninstall Premium from my Add and Remove Programs (both Premium and Professional showed up) then enter my key given via the MSDN Subscriber portal and BAM! I had my Visual Studio up and running again. Also, as an extra spurt of luck, I didn't loose my recent projects. This is only a small thing, but I really was dreading un-installing and potentially loosing my file history.

I would love to hear in the comments from anyone else who was having this problem and if my solution had the same outcome for them. Or if you know how the web installer works, maybe either confirm or deny my theory.

Thanks for reading!

Tagged with visual-studio, downgrade, legacy-blog-post

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