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

If you look at this list of known issues which only apply to those using Visual Studio 2005 on Vista without being an administrator, I find that several of those affect me. Just the process of debugging web apps in IE is quite simply unacceptable, even leaving aside all the other problems, like the fact that no profilers will work without being elevated, and you can’t even browse web services on your own machine, and the managed code SDK debugger fails or hangs when a user changes options without elevated administrator permissions…

Honestly, you’d have to be logging in as that administrative user each time you wanted to test an installer, or shut off or turn on the local SQL Server (which I don’t leave running all the time).

I’ve got to say no to “Add my domain account as an administrator.”

On both XP and Vista for the last two years we have had a basic domain account called “LocalAdmin” added as a local administrator to all dev workstations. We use this to install stuff. Otherwise, our personal domain accounts are just boring users (not even Power Users).

Visual Studio, SQL Server, web development and all the usual stuff works fine as non-admin.

Regards,