ISerialized .Net, C#, Scrum and agile software development

Double-clicking Visual Studio solution files in Windows 7

I guess I am not the only one annoyed by the fact that I could not open Visual Studio by double-clicking a solution file. Finally I looked into this problem and first found a simple, but not satisfying solution:

By setting Visual Studio to not run as an administrator. But if you ever tried running Visual Studio on Windows 7 without admin rights, you know this is not a satisfying solution!

Investigating further, I remembered way back when I converted from VS 2005 that there was another process involved to handle the different installations and solution file versions, namely the VSLauncher.exe, and this is actually the simple solution to all my problem. Set VSLauncher.exe to run as admin, an double-clicking works fine!

VSLauncher.exe is located in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\MSEnv

Right-click and choose Properties -> Compatibility and set "Run this program as an administrator".

About Paul Eie

My name is Pål Eie (English alias: Paul Eie) I'm an IT consultant working in Stavanger, Norway. My experience spans from AIX to Windows and from embedded C to Uniface, Java, C++ and C#. My blog will involve everything that is related to technology. As long as it might be of interest to either newbies or seniors, I will blog about it! If you find some of my posts about basic old technology, it just means you know more than many of my other readers!