Visual Studio 2010 won’t debug under Windows 7

I found out that Visual Studio 2010 won’t let the debugger started until I run Visual Studio 2010 with Run as Administrator. I think I figured out why. Here is an account of what I was seeing and how I fixed it.

I could open my C# ASP.NET web application just fine using Run (Control-F5). Then I tried to do it with Debug (F5) and I got the following message:

Unable to launch the ASP.NET Development Server.Uncaught  exception thrown by method called through Reflection.

I then Googled that error message. I found this link. I go to the section 2.4.11.2 (shown below).

2.4.11.2 Debugger start fails if the IntelliTrace recordings directory is Read-Only

By default, IntelliTrace files are located in the "%ProgramData%\Microsoft Visual Studio\10.0\TraceDebugging\" directory.  If this directory is made read-only, or the directory is changed to a read-only location, an uncaught exception gets raised to the user.  "Error while trying to run project: Uncaught exception thrown by method called through Reflection."

To resolve this issue:

Option 1: Modify the permissions of the directory to be writable.

Option 2: Change the directory where IntelliTrace recordings are stored.

• ○ In Visual Studio, open the Options dialog box.
• ○ Expand the IntelliTrace item in the left pane of the dialog box.
• ○ Click the Advanced item under IntelliTrace.
• ○ Change the IntelliTrace recordings directory to one that is not read-only.
• ○ Click OK.

I tried both option 1 and Option 2. The problem is that when I tried Option 1 and went to the directory suggested, it was not there. When I tried Option 2 I got the following message where I was expecting to see some kind of useful UI:

An error occurred loading this property page.

Then I got the idea, what if Visual Studio 2010 needs to be run as administrator even though I am an admin under. I am knew to Windows 7, but I am quickly learning that most techie tasks require the programs to be Run As Administrator; Visual Studio is no exception to this. It seems that I am not the only one to come to this conclusion. Here Microsoft suggests changing Visual Studio 2010 to run as Administrator and I have shown instructions below:

If you are running Windows Vista, you must start Visual Studio by going to the Start menu and right clicking Visual Studio 2010 and selecting Run as Administrator. To always launch Visual Studio 2010 as an administrator you can create a short cut, right click the short cut, select properties, select the Compatibility tab, and check the Run this program as an administrator checkbox. When you start Visual Studio 2010 with this shortcut, it will always run as administrator.

The good news is that after to run VS2010 (Visual Studio 2010) as Administrator the proper directory structure will be created and the if you happen to run VS2010 without running it as Administrator you can now run as Debug (F5) and you can also go to the Options | IntelliTrace | Advanced and see a useful UI with no errors.

I think to keep things simple I will run VS2010 as administrator at all times.