What normally happens is information regarding the date of first time you run VA is serialized and added to your registry. The date info is written in whatever format indicated by Windows. For instance, in the U.S., it would be written Month/Day/Year + Time. When the information is read back, it is expected to be in the same format. If the date is not valid, an exception is raised and the software crashes. In the past, I have not put much handling in there, as it's a delicate area and I don't want to chance messing up somebody's trial (a lot of people use the beta, even in trial mode). Not sure why it would bomb on the first run with that exception, as the code shows that if the data isn't there, it's created. The only other things that would cause issue would be if the data was tampered with, or the possible (however highly unlikely) corrupt registry write.
I'm adding handling to the code to try to help out when something like this occurs. May be in the next beta release.