Running with normal user permissions

The information below identifies the known issues you will face when using Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Vista as a normal user.

Note: These issues are specific to running without administrator permissions. You will experience these issues as well as those located here.

Microsoft recommends that when using Visual Studio 2005, you do the following:

• Run Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions
• Be a member of the "Administrators" group on the local machine
• Right-click the Visual Studio icon and select the "Run as administrator" option from the context menu

Note: You can create a shortcut to Visual Studio and select the option to always run with elevated administrator permissions. Using this shortcut would be the equivalent of the right-click method described above.

If you use SQL Server 2005 (including the SQL Server Express Edition that comes with Visual Studio 2005), you should review Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on "Microsoft Windows Server Longhorn" or Microsoft Windows Vista.

General

Title: Server Explorer: Message Queues

• Description: Public message queues can be created only if AD Integration Component is installed and the user has joined the domain. AD Integration is not supported on Starter, Home Basic or Home Premium SKUs.
• Workaround: User needs to join domain.

Title: Browse web services on local machine

• Description: Attempting to browse the local machine for web services will generate the following error message:
  There was an error while enumerating services on local machine:
  Active Directory Services cannot find the web server. A possible cause for this is an incompatibility between versions of Internet Information Server (IIS) on the client and the server. Another possible cause is that IIS is not installed on the local machine, or the user identity under which you are running may not have permissions to view websites on this machine.
• Workaround: You will need to run Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions.

Title: When running loadtest and enabling the SQL trace profiling, the SQL trace entries are doubled

• Description: When a developer runs a Visual Studio Team System load test with the option to enable SQL tracing enabled, then the load test code sends a request to SQL to start a trace which causes SQL to create a trace file. After this file is added to the test results database the load test tries to delete the file. The resultant security failure causes the load test process to try the test again.
• Workaround: Running Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions enables the correct deletion of the test results file and thus the operation being run only once.

Title: Profiling as a normal user fails because the user does not have permission to create global objects

• Description: When running the Visual Studio Profiler the process will fail due to an inability of the normal user to create the require objects to run the profile request.
• Workaround: Running Visual Studio with elevated administrator privileges enables the creation of the required objects.

Title: DbgCLR.exe fails or hangs without administrator permissions

• Description: The manager code SDK debugger fails or hangs when a user changes options (like setting symbol path) without elevated administrator permissions.
• Workaround: Run the debugger with elevated administrator permissions.

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Office

Development

Title: Compiling samples will fail

• Description: Currently the samples that ship with Visual Studio are installed under Program Files. When the user opens a sample and presses F5, it will result in errors about the output directories. Windows Vista sets access permissions on the Program Files directories and will not allow a normal user to write to those directories.
• Workaround: Run Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions or copy the samples to a user a directory.

Title: Visual Studio Setup will fail

• Description: All of the setup processes in Visual Studio will fail due to various requirements such as writing to HKLM or trying to place files in the Program Files directory. Many of these actions require administrator permissions.
• Workaround: To install Visual Studio a user will need to be an administrator.

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Smart Devices

Development

Title: Adding a Device COM Dll as a reference to a device project

• Description: When a user creates a Smart Device Project and attempts to add a reference to a device COM DLL, Visual Studio will attempt to register the COM DLL resulting in a failure.
• Workaround: Run Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions.

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Web

Development

Title: Exception thrown when accessing FTP URL's

• Description: When a user attempts to access a FTP URL Visual Studio calls getInputStream() and getContent() of URLConnection which results in it throwing java.io.IOException "The operation has timed out".
• Workaround: None

Title: Binding to localhost throws exception

• Description: A developer who attempts to bind to localhost will cause Visual Studio to throw a NoRouteToHostException when attempting to create a Socket with localhost.
• Workaround: None

Title: Web Test recorder is disabled on some machines

• Description: The Web-test recorder is an IE add-in that Visual Studio 2005 Team System uses to record web tests. When a VS user creates a new web test, VS will launch IE with the add-in activated. The add-in runs within the IE process and connects back to VS process using .NET remoting IPC Channels. All communication between the web test recorder add-in and VS occurs over these IPC channels. On Vista, IE starts in Protected Mode (MIC Low) which prevents the web test recorder from connecting back to VS (MIC Medium). There is no workaround without disabling IE protected mode.
• Workaround: Disable IE protected mode. Developers are warned that disabling the IE protected mode negates one of the most important security features for IE. Running Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions will also solve this issue.

Title: Cannot Open or Create IIS7 website when running Visual Studio without elevated administrator permissions.

• Description: If the user is logged in as a normal user and IIS7 is properly configured for development, the user will get a misleading error message stating they have to be member of "administrators" group. If user tries as a member of the administrators group, the same error message persists.
• Workaround: The error is misleading. Visual Studio actually needs to be run with elevated administrator permissions. It is not sufficient to just be a member of the administrator group.

Title: Opening IIS WAP project non-elevated silently fails to create misc files project

• Description: A developer has already run Visual Studio with elevated permissions and created a new WAP project on IIS. The user then runs VS without elevation, and opens that project using MRU list. When opening this project without running VS elevated, the project opens fine, but all the ASP.NET functionality is broken and project will work more like a class library.
• Workaround: While there is no error message shown, Visual Studio needs to run with elevated administrator permissions even after the project has been created.

Title: Compiling samples fail

• Description: Currently the samples that ship with Visual Studio are installed under Program Files. When the user opens a sample and presses F5, it will result in errors about the output directories. Windows Vista sets access permissions on the Program Files directories and will not allow a normal user to write to those directories.
• Workaround: Run Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions or copy the samples to a user a directory.

Title: Visual Studio Setup will fail

• Description: All of the setup processes in Visual Studio will fail due to various requirements such as writing to HKLM or trying to place files in the Program Files directory. Many of these actions require administrator permissions.
• Workaround: To install Visual Studio a user will need to be an administrator.

Title: Breakpoints in Visual Studio may not be hit when debugging an ASP.NET application.

• Description: Breakpoints in ASP.NET application may not be hit.
• Workaround: Visual Studio should be run with elevated administrator permissions.

Debugging

Title: Web debugging fails due to permissions level in IE

• Description: A developer attempting to debug a web application launches IE and browses to the application website. When putting Visual Studio into debug mode, IE will launch a new (second) instance of iexplore.exe as a low integrity process while shutting down the first instance. The debugger attaches to this second instance, which is not executing any user code.
• Workaround: Start Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions or use the debug menu to attach to IE after IE has re-launched.

Title: Web application profiling fails due to permissions level in IE

• Description A developer attempting to debug a web application launches IE and browses to the application website. When putting Visual Studio into debug mode, IE will launch a new (second) instance of iexplore.exe as a low integrity process while shutting down the first instance. The profiler attaches to this second instance, which is not executing any user code.
• Workaround: Start Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions or use the debug menu to attach to IE after IE has re-launched.

Deployment

Title: Visual Studio Setup Projects: Web setup Custom Action fails when the MSI install is not run with elevated administrator permissions

• Description: A web developer using a VS setup project to create a setup MSI with a Custom Action will find that it fails due to being launched without elevated administrator permissions.
• Workaround: Run Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions.

Title: Web Setup fails to install on Windows Vista

• Description: A Developer who creates a web setup project using Visual Studio on a Windows Vista machine that has IIS 7 and the IIS6 Compatibility support installed will find that the setup fails due to a permissions failure and be left with a dialog saying "Preparing for Installation"
• Workaround: Run Visual Studio and the resultant setup project with elevated administrator permissions

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Windows

Development

Title: Some SDK Tools may not run as expected

• Description: A developer attempting to run some of the SDK tools will run into cases where they do not act as expected yet issue no errors. This is due to the tools not having the ability to pass on elevation requests.
• Workaround: Open a command window with elevated permissions and then execute the required SDK tool.

Title: SDK Quickstart configuration fails

• Description: Users who try to run the Quickstart configuration application from the installed HTML page will find it fails.
• Workaround: None. Individual samples can be setup but there is no combined configurations/setup ability.

Title: Some C# interop samples do not work

• Description: Some COM interop samples require elevated administrator permissions in order to add information to the registry.
• Workaround: Run the sample with elevated administrator permissions.

Title: Package registration

• Description: When a developer runs RegPkg to register a package, it will place its values in the virtualized registry location. When Visual Studio launches, it will not find the package registration.
• Workaround: Run RegPkg or Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions.

Title: Save Visual Studio Team System for Software Architects Prototypes

• Description: The user customizes an out of the box application prototype (changes the language, project template, etc.) Then tries to save this application prototype for later use and finds that the save operation writes the file under the Program Files directory which requires administrator permissions.
• Workaround: Run Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions.

Title: Some Build DSLs (VS SDK only)

• Description: The Domain Specific Language (DSL) toolkit ships as part of the VS SDK. This toolkit allows the developer to author designers that run within the VS shell. A VS Package is one of the outputs of building the DSL designer. In order run the DSL designer (for debugging or other use), the package has to be registered. This registration requires admin permissions. The package is registered by regpkg.exe (standard VS SDK tool).
• Workaround: Run the tools or Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions.

Title: Compiling samples fail

• Description: Currently the samples that ship with Visual Studio are installed under Program Files. When the user opens a sample and presses F5, it will result in errors about the output directories. Windows Vista sets access permissions on the Program Files directories and will not allow a normal user to write to those directories.
• Workaround: Run Visual Studio with elevated administrator permissions or copy the samples to a user a directory.

Title: Visual Studio Setup will fail

• Description: All of the setup processes in Visual Studio will fail due to various requirements such as writing to HKLM or trying to place files in the Program Files directory. Many of these actions require administrator permissions.
• Workaround: To install Visual Studio a user will need to be an administrator.

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