Comment by hermitdev
6 years ago
MS is very aggressive with this in their Windows 10 development VM images you can download. Theyre free, but they only last 3 months. There doesnt appear to be anyway to activate - even if you have a legit license key through my.visualstudio.com.
The VM prebuilt with VStudio, Visual Studio Code, WSL w/ Ubuntu and other goodies in a prebuilt image is attractive and a time saver. But, it's immediately on a kill switch timer of about 3 months, if you download while new. Current image expires in Feb 2020.
I was using this to connect to work in a VPN in an effort to keep work and personal separate, but I'll have to burn a Win10 license key from my subscription for a new VM.
Caveat: the expiration doesnt render the image entirely worthless, but it will only stay up for around 90 mins before shutting down without warning.
I just take a snapshot then revert after 90 days. Seems to work. I vaguely remember MS docs suggesting this.
You can also refresh them with a powershell command a limited number of times IIRC.
I think it was in the instructions for using the Internet Explorer/Edge VMs (see page 3): https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/release_notes_license_ter...
There is ways of keeping it up. The one I can explain here, is to do a snapshot as soon as you have your apps setup, then just roll back at the end. There is "other" ways that I can't explain here.