How possibly did IntelliTrace become available on

Question

As described in some other Q/As like this and this, IntelliTrace is a Visual Studio Ultimate feature only. But for some reason I have Visual Studio Professional 2013 (Version 12.0.30723.00 Update 3) and I have IntelliTrace on it. I don't know how it got there but it shows up in Quick Launch (Ctrl+Q) and is enabled from View -> Toolbars -> IntelliTrace. I told my colleague to use it and he didn't have it on his VS Pro! Do you have any clues why IntelliTrace is available on my VS 2013 Pro installation? I see comments from other people, such as @doglin here that he has the same.

I remember I had VS Ultimate trial installed before I installed VS Pro but can it be from there?

Answer 1

I have the same, it looks like a bug in Visual Studio. Installing Ultimate Trial add IntelliTrace feature to Professional edition.

Answer 2

see UPDATE below before you try this

I can confirm that I added IntelliTrace to VS2012 Pro by doing the following:

1. VS2012 installed with latest SP plus addins.
2. Install VS2012 Ultimate 30 day trial (about 30 minutes) {not sure if I was forced to reboot here - If I was asked I rebooted}
3. Started VS2012 Ultimate (about 10 minutes)
4. Opened one of my projects and confirmed that IntelliTrace was working.
5. Uninstalled VS2012 Ultimate.
6. Rebooted as suggested by the uninstaller.
7. Started VS2012. It reverted back to Pro, with Intellitrace still present, add ins working. Only the changes I made to the IDE were lost (window positions, toolbars etc)

I now have IntelliTrace in VS2012 :)

--- UPDATE --- I tried this and initially it appeared to work. But...

I could not longer create test projects and I had some test projects that failed to load. I tried many things and Googled the hell out of it. In the end, to restore VS 2012 to a working state, I uninstalled VS and reinstalled it.

I did not get IntelliTrace for free :(