When I installed 2012 express there was a message that said it was for evaluation only and there was a prompt if it was going to be used for commercial purposes. 2010 express did not have any of those chillers in it's license.
Visual Studio 2012 Express can be evaluated for up to 30 days, but you can get a free perpetual license by registering it. See the download page.
As for commercial development, the Visual Studio 2012 and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper contains the following (with our emphasis):
Visual Studio Express 2012 Products
A number of free development tools are also available, including Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8, Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web, Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop, and Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone 8. These tools provide a subset of the functionality available in Visual Studio Professional 2012 and are specific to writing applications targeting these platforms. Each of these Visual Studio Express 2012 products is licensed per user and subject to the use terms included with the product. Visual Studio Express can be used to build production applications.
Also check out the product-specific EULA that's displayed at installation time.
By the way, we're glad you found solutions to the issues you were having, and we'd like to thank you very much for sharing the details!
