I've been seeing the following error message popup on a regular basis lately. Turns out that when I installed the SQL Server Client Tools (SQL Server Management Studio and BIDS) that I was a bit lazy and didn't use a license key, instead selecting Evaluation Edition. I figured that since it was only the client tools it wouldn't be a drama... turns out I was wrong.
Reinstalling the tools or doing an Edition Upgrade doesn't help either - instead the same problem keeps on occuring. Turns out that you need to do a registry hack to get the Edition Upgrade to work for management studio. In particular we need to update HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\100\ConfigurationState\CommonFiles from 1 to 3. We then need to re-run the Edition Upgrade from Evaluation Edition to another edition (Express didn't work for me, standard worked fine though).
