Visual Studio 2008 on Windows Vista requires you to run it in as an Administrator to be able to access local IIS web sites. I emphasized Windows Vista because I don’t remember having encountered the same issue when I was still using Windows XP. This is annoying especially when you are opening your source code by double-clicking the solution file from the Windows Explorer. You’ll be required to close Visual Studio, do a right-click on the Visual Studio 2008 shortcut and select the Run as Administrator.
To make sure you’re running Visual Studio 2008 as an Administrator everytime you’re launching it from the shortcut or by double-clicking the Visual Studio solution file, you have to set the following exe’s to run as administrator:
- C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 9.0Common7IDEdevenv.exe – Executable file of the Visual Studio IDE.
- C:Program FilesCommon Filesmicrosoft sharedMSEnvVSLauncher.exe – Executable file for the Visual Studio Version Selector. It is the default program to run Visual Studio files.
Here are the steps:
- Navigate to the location of the devenv.exe in Windows Explorer.
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Right-click on the exe and click on Properties.
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In the Compatibility tab, be sure the “Run this program as an administrator” is checked.
- Do the steps with the VSLauncher.exe.
- Select a *.sln file and double-click to test it.
