When you create a new project, do you commonly change the Assembly Information?  If you do, you ever get tired of changing the "Microsoft" in the Company and Copyright?  If you are, then please read on for the quick fix.

When you "whip" up a new project, do you always change the Assembly Information?  If no, then thank you for your time, move along, nothing to see here, nothing to see here, move along, thank you.....so long.

Still here?  Good!  If you DO make it a habit to change the Assembly Information from the defaults, then chances are you get a bit miffed for Microsoft taking credit for YOUR hard work (or should I say, the hard work you're ABOUT to do, you haven't coded anything yet right, you just started haah). 

Anyways, here's what I'm talking about, if you see the Assembly Information dialog like below, you know what I mean.

Now, the fix is really easy to change the default "Microsoft" to what ever you want.  The two things to note are this is a Windows Registry (regedt32.exe) and the hive/node where you have to goto to make the change.  The registry node is the only tricky part, if you're on x86 (32 bit Windows) or x64 (64 bit Windows).

x86 = HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

64x = HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

Notice the WindowsOnWindows (Wow is not "WOW THAT'S COOL!" hahah) part of the x64 path.  If you TRY to make the change in the other one and you're using x64 Windows, your change won't work.

Here's what you'll likely see when you first open up the Registry to that node (yes, mine is on the x64 Windows).

Once you change that entry, restart Visual Studio, AND start a new project (existing projects already have their information filled out, so you can use them againt o test this out, you'll have to create a new project), you'll see something similar to this.

Now that you know how to change the default Assembly Information, it's time to grab a coffee and get coding!

 

Resources:

CODE: Ask the Doc Detective by Ken Getz

Remcos Ros'Blog: How to: change default company name in Assembly Information