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Extension Manager Administrative Settings

By default, Visual Studio loads all extensions. However, you can restrict the loading of per-user extensions.

Most Visual Studio extensions are per-user extensions, each of which apply only to a specific user of the system. Per-user extensions are installed in %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Visual Studio version\Extensions\Company\Product\Version\.

Administrative-user extensions apply to all users, and are installed in ..\Visual Studio installation folder\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Company\Product\Version\. The options that are described in this document do not affect administrative-user extensions.

Restricting Per-User Extensions

To protect your system against extensions that may contain errors or malicious code, you can restrict all per-user extensions to load only when Visual Studio is run under standard user rights. This means that per-user extensions are disabled when Visual Studio is run under administrative user rights.

To restrict the loading of per-user extensions

  1. On the Tools menu, click Options.

  2. In the Environment node, select Extension Manager.

  3. Clear Load per user extensions when running as administrator.

    Note

    This option can be set programmatically by setting this registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ExtensionManager "EnableAdminExtensions"=0x00000000.

Disabling Per-User Extensions

You can disable all per-user extensions for all users by setting this registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ExtensionManager "DisableUserExtensions"=0x00000001.

See Also

Other Resources

Installing and Managing Visual Studio Tools and Extensions