Administrators and developers who need to detect if Visual Studio 2012 is installed on a machine can use similar keys as those used for past releases like Visual Studio 2010. In general, these detection keys are always found in the 32-bit registry hive with a pattern like:
- Core product: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\DevDiv\Family\Servicing\Version\Edition
- Installed languages: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\DevDiv\Family\Servicing\Version\Edition\LCID
So if you needed to detect if VS2012 Ultimate is installed, you can check if the “Install” registry value is set (will always be a REG_DWORD with data set to 1) in the following language-independent registry key:
- HKLM\Software\Microsoft\DevDiv\VS\Servicing\11.0\Ultimate
What has changed from previous releases like VS2010 is that Ultimate contains the Professional and Premium editions, just like Premium contains Professional. This is handy because in the past if a developer’s add-in (for example) supported Professional and greater, the developer would have to check at least three different registry keys. Now to detect Professional or greater you need to only check in the following registry key:
- HKLM\Software\Microsoft\DevDiv\VS\Servicing\11.0\Professional
We’ve also added the complete product version to the registry key, when before this was only the build and revision numbers.