I'm having this exact problem:
Visual Studio requires elevated permissions in Windows 7
But I'm not really happy with any of the answers there so I was wondering if someone could expand on an alternative solution.
Setup
dev box is running server 2008
Visual Studio 2010
IIS 7
In order to attach to a process running under IIS, I am being told I need to run Visual Studio as an administrator. If I do this, whenever I edit and check a file into source control the other users (who are not administrators) can't edit the file because the FILE now needs elevated permissions to edit! Causing massive headaches, so basically running VS as admin doesn't appear to be an option.
Does anyone have any alternatives?
Attaching to process which runs under different user credentials or higher integrity level requires SE_DEBUG privilege which application obtains when running as administrator. Your IIS AppPool is most likely not configured to run under your account hence the requirement for elevated permissions.
Starting from Windows Vista SE_DEBUG privilege is disabled for processes not running as admin (or more precisely, not running with high integrity level).
From MSDN:
Certain administrative Windows privileges can be assigned to an access
token only with at least a high integrity level. If the access token
integrity level is less than high, then specific administrative
privileges are not allowed and are removed from the access token. The
administrative privileges associated with a high integrity level are:
...
SE_DEBUG_PRIVILEGE
...
And fruther from here:
SeDebugPrivilege - Required to debug and adjust the memory of a
process owned by another account. User Right: Debug programs.
If you go to properties on your website project, then click on the 'web' tab, then choose the option 'Use local iis web server', you can then debug 'as normal'. That works for us without elevated permissions.
Bit late in the game here, but I've found if you install Remote Tools for Visual Studio and install it locally, you can then attach to w3wp.exe without having to run under elevated permissions!
To give this privilege
1) Run GPEDIT.MSC from command prompt.
2) Navigate to
Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings ->
Security Settings -> Local Policies -> User Right Assignment -> Debug
programs and add users to it.*
*You should also be aware of If you grant somebody SeDebugPrivilege, you gave away the farm
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/0f394922-4d3d-4c00-8bc1-88aeeeedd843/how-to-add-a-user-to-debug-users-group?forum=netfxbcl
Update:
This not works too.
The alternative is, as describe on book "Professional Visual Basic 2012 and .NET 4.5 Programming": Go to the bin/debug folder and manually start the ProVB2012_Security.exe executable outside of debugger. But in either case you should now be prompted to grant administrator rights...
Related
Using Visual Source Safe 2005, I downloaded a jobmate's project in my computer and built it correctly, but when I press "play" to debug it I receive an error message telling me that I need higher privileges.
Looking around, I've noticed that the freshly build program has the little shield icon that means that I need administrator permission to run it and actually, if I run it outside Visual Studio, I manage to execute it after the UAC question.
I'm domain and local administrator so I can disable UAC, but I don't think this is the solution, so: what can make my program to require administrative privileges?
Is there an option in the application properties ? I cannot find anything that tells Visual Studio that my application will need to be run in an elevated state.
If you're just trying to do this on your development machine, you could:
Log in as the Administrator and run Visual Studio
-OR-
Right-click the Visual Studio shortcut and click "Run As" and supply the Administrator account credentials.
If this is for an application you are developing to live on a server where the server cannot be left logged in as an Administrator while your application runs, you should either:
Build in impersonation into the code of the application, so it will run as whatever account you want it to run under
Give that account Administrator privileges (if allowed) or choose an account that already has the desired privileges for the WindowsImpersonationContext.
Info on Impersonation:
MSDN Windows Impersonation Code
Code Project Example
StackOverflow Impersonation Question/Example
Without information about your app, i.e. if it is a web app or standard exe or SharePoint web page, it's hard to give you more specific info. For .NET web apps, ensure you use Windows authentication and set your app pool to run under the account with Admin privileges. Note that you may still need to add the Impersonation code into your app where you need the higher privileges, even if it is running under that account.
For SP pages, you need SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(function(){ ... });
I am running the following
Win7 SP1 Enterprise
VS2010 Pro SP1
Non admin user
I need to attach to the w3wp.exe process
I have assigned myself debug privs via GPO
When attempting to attach to the process I get
Microsoft Visual Studio
Unable to attach to the process. Visual Studio has insufficient privileges to debug this process. To debug this process, Visual Studio must be run as an administrator.
The main issue is I need to debug a site that handles multiple hostheaders (sitecore)
Cassini has no concept of hostheaders
IISExpress does not handle hostheaders - cannot launch site with different hostheaders*
Is there an alternative around this ?
Side note
I have tried to give myself admin token with the following as a test as well
http://www.scriptlogic.com/products/privilegeauthority/
VS launches as an 'admin' but gives me the whole Unable to attach to the process. Visual Studio has insufficient privileges to debug this process.
Side note 2
Using process explorer on devenv.exe doesn't show the SeDebugPrivilege enabled
I have tried using ntrights.exe to grant the rights - rebooted and still not there.
If you have an admin password you can (when you open VS) right click, and then say 'run as administrator', otherwise you just may be out of luck as far as I know.
This link here: Working with Web Projects in Visual Studio as a Non-Administrative User says it clearly:
You cannot attach to a process that is running under the IIS worker
process because it requires administrative privileges.
We ended up using http://www.scriptlogic.com/products/privilegeauthority/ granting the SeDebug Token as well.
This worked out well as we could also apply this to other products like ants profiler which needed admin rights to run (wasn't required for XP)
I am trying to debug a service in VS 2005 running. Service is running under SYSTEM username.
I have opened VS as administrator.
The error I am getting is:
Unable to attach the process. The system cannot find the file specified
I am running on Windows Vista.
Maybe the program you are trying to debug is using admin privileges but visual studio doesn't have admin rights.
run visual studio as administrator, even if you are logged in as administrator it doesn't automatically have admin privileges.
you can do this quickly by right clicking on the short cut of Visual Studio and click Run as Administrator.
Or you can make it automatically run as admin by right clicking the shortcut and choosing properties. Choose Compatibility -> Privilege Level -> Run this program as administrator
Try to check Local Security Policy, make sure that Administrators(or your user) have "Debug Programs" permission (from Security Settings -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignment).
On my Windows XP machine Visual Studio 2003 2005 and 2008 all complain that I cannot start debugging my web application because I must either be a member of the Debug Users group or of the Administrators group. So, I am an Administrator and I added Debug Users just in case, and it still complains.
Short of reformatting my machine and starting over, has anyone encountered this and fixed it [with some undocumented command]?
Which users and/or groups are in your "Debug programs" right (under User Rights Assignment)? Maybe that setting got overridden by group policy (Daniel's answer), or just got out of whack for some reason. It should, obviously, include the "Debug Users" group.
We encountered an issue like this and found that it was a group policy issue. There's a group policy setting for debugging that needs to be enabled. It overrides the fact that you are in the right group.
You could try running "VsJITDebugger.exe -p <PID>" on the command line. I've had a simalar situation and been able to debug the application using the above.
"VsJITDebugger.exe /?" will show you all the options.
The PID can be found either in the task manager (view->Select Columns...) or Visual Studio's Attach to Process.
Awesome, I'd never really known about the "Administrative Tools -> Local Security Settings -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignment" under XP. My "Debug programs" policy is set to "Administrators" only, yet trying to debug now just worked and this is several days after installing the .NET framework 3.5, so maybe that installation fixed things in the background.