Turn off Visual Studio Attach security warning when debugging IIS

Question

When using Visual Studio 2008 or 2010, every time you attach to IIS w3wp.exe you get the Attach Security Warning:

How do you turn this of?

It would be cool to know also, how to keep it attached for longer, as this seems to time out after a while.

Also, I've tried the Microsoft Docs page Security Warning: Attaching to a process owned by an untrusted user can be dangerous, but it didn't work

This worked until recently, in VS2015 - I definitely have all VS instances closed, & the key is set, but the warning started popping up again. — fastmultiplication, Mar 16 '16 at 21:56

score 241 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 18 '23 at 11:26

241

Also found in the article mentioned by Tzury, but to sum up the answers in this thread:

Make sure Visual Studio is not running when changing the registry key or it will be overwritten on exit with the old value

Visual Studio 2022: Follow these instructions, then reboot.
Visual Studio 2019: Follow these instructions, then reboot.

For older versions of Visual Studio:

Change (or create) the following registry key to 1:

Visual Studio 2008 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Debugger\DisableAttachSecurityWarning

Visual Studio 2010 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Debugger\DisableAttachSecurityWarning

Visual Studio 2012 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Debugger\DisableAttachSecurityWarning

Visual Studio 2013 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\Debugger\DisableAttachSecurityWarning

Visual Studio 2015 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\Debugger\DisableAttachSecurityWarning

For VS2015, you might need to create the Registry Key referenced above.

Make sure Visual Studio is not running, and open the Registry Editor.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\Debugger, right-click and create a new DWORD:

Name: DisableAttachSecurityWarning
Value: 1.

Update: If you don't want to open up regedit, save this gist as a *.reg file and run it (imports the keys for all VS versions lower than VS2017).

Visual Studio 2017

The configuration is saved in a private registry location, see this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/41122603/67910

For VS 2017+, save this gist as a *.ps1 file and run it as admin, or copy and paste the following code in a ps1 file:

#IMPORTANT: Must be run as admin

New-PSDrive HKU Registry HKEY_USERS

dir $env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\VisualStudio\*.* | % {
    #https://stackoverflow.com/a/41122603

    $filePath = "$_\privateregistry.bin"
    if (Test-Path $filePath) {
        reg load 'HKU\VSPrivateRegistry\' $filePath

        $BasePath='HKU:\VSPrivateRegistry\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio'

        if (Test-Path $BasePath) {
            $keysResult=dir $BasePath
            $keysResult | ? {$_.Name -match '\\\d+\.\d+_[^_]+$'} | % {
                $keyName = $_.Name -replace 'HKEY_USERS','HKU:'
                Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "ADDING key to reg path $keyName in file $filePath"
                New-ItemProperty -Path $keyName\Debugger -Name DisableAttachSecurityWarning -Value 1
            }
            $keysResult.Handle.Close()    
        }
        [gc]::collect()

        reg unload 'HKU\VSPrivateRegistry'   
    }
}
Remove-PSDrive HKU

edited Jan 18 '23 at 11:26

hectorct

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answered Jan 08 '10 at 10:25

Wiebe Tijsma

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For VS2012 the key is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Debugger\DisableAttachSecurityWarning – maddoxej Oct 31 '12 at 17:17
do need to restart VS to take it effect? – Imran Rizvi Aug 22 '13 at 12:31
17

@ImranRizvi you need to make sure it's not running while making the registry change anyway, otherwise it will just be overwritten on exit with the old value – Wiebe Tijsma Aug 22 '13 at 22:09
@ashes999 Sure, no problem :P I left the edit though because the comments already indicate that other people might have some form of visual impairment (due to rushed reading too) :) – Wiebe Tijsma Sep 26 '14 at 11:02
4

what about VS 2017? The Debugger key is missing at all (most of them are missing) – DATEx2 Feb 08 '17 at 21:13
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Looks like Visual Studio 2017 keeps local registry, so you have to change this file and not the global registry. I fixed problem with Attach Security Warning just editing this local registry file. Read this answer for more explanation: http://stackoverflow.com/a/41122603/692665 – Ceridan Mar 21 '17 at 10:03
@Ceridan thanks! I've updated the question with your link. – Wiebe Tijsma Mar 21 '17 at 14:14
1

@TravisK, basically you haven't this key by default and this situation equals to have this key with value equals to zero. In your case you should manually add new DWORD with key DisableAttachSecurityWarning and Value equals to 1 to the Debugger section. When you are done, just unload private registry and now you may run your MSVS and test it. – Ceridan May 25 '17 at 06:11
1

if you get the following warning File C:\XXX\Install.ps1 cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see "get-help about_signing" for more details. run your script using the command below powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -File script.ps1 source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4037939/powershell-says-execution-of-scripts-is-disabled-on-this-system – Jonathan Mc Namee Oct 20 '17 at 08:44
Definitely a market for a Tweak-Visual-Studio-2017 tool, along the lines of the old tweakui. This would be the first tweak for sure! – Jonathan Mc Namee Oct 20 '17 at 08:47
I set the HKCU version of the VS2019 key from within VS2019 itself in the Package Manager Console, and it took immediately without having to restart. Useful if you have it loaded already and don't want to restart. – Chris R. Donnelly Apr 15 '19 at 16:18
@ChrisR.Donnelly that sounds like a smart idea! Do you have some more details on how to do it? – Wiebe Tijsma Apr 15 '19 at 16:40
1

@WiebeTijsma Just run the script with a BasePath of `HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio` from within Package Manager Console. VS2019 (and presumably 2017) loads its local registry hive as HKCU. – Chris R. Donnelly Apr 15 '19 at 19:28
3

For VS2019, this worked for me: https://www.davici.nl/blog/disable-visual-studio-2019-iis-security-attach-warning – Sue Maurizio Feb 27 '20 at 11:00

score 13 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 03 '10 at 03:22

The registry setting does work; however, you have to make sure you set it in the 32-bit registry sandbox for VS2005/2008 by either using the 32-bit regedit.exe in %windir%\SysWOW64\ or adding it under HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\.... I created a .reg script that simply adds it to both:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Debugger]
"DisableAttachSecurityWarning"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Debugger]
"DisableAttachSecurityWarning"=dword:00000001

Just change the version to 8.0 for 2005, 10.0 for 2010, etc.

NOTE: regedit on Windows 7 seems to want .reg files saved as UTF16-LE, so if you save it to a .reg file, be aware you need to do that.

Eric Villemure · Answer 3 · 2018-11-09T18:01:15.027

8

I was able to make it Work on Windows 7. I have first changed the registry value with VS2008 still opened. I then closed it and refreshed the registry editor and noticed that the value was reset to 0. I then changed it back to 1 and started VS2008. It now works fine. I have tried to close VS2008 and open it back and the registry value stays 1. Thanks for your help

edited Nov 09 '18 at 18:01

answered Mar 25 '10 at 12:53

Eric Villemure

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score 7 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 06 '13 at 19:55

The other answers in this post contain the right information but I had problems getting it to work so this is an attempt at make the answer very explicit. These instructions worked for Visual Studio 2010 running on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit.

Ensure that no instances of Visual Studio are running (Use task manager to check for devenv.exe)
Add the DWORD DisableAttachSecurityWarning registry value to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\X.X\Debugger and set the value to be 1. For Visual Studio 2008 replace X.X with 9.0, for 2010 use 10.0

The reason why I struggled to get this working was that I was trying this using HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER. I had to resort to using Process Monitor and a bit of filtering on devenv to identify my mistake. I suspect the HKLM value only has any affect if it gets set before you open Visual Studio for the first time.

Any open instances of Visual Studio will overwrite your changes when they are closed and only new instances would pick up the setting in any case.

The use of the Wow6432Node registry seems to be unnecessary as far as I can tell. The following Powershell commands will apply the steps for Visual Studio 2010.

Get-Process -Name devenv* | ForEach-Object { Stop-Process $_.Id }
New-ItemProperty -Path 'HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Debugger' -Name 'DisableAttachSecurityWarning' -Value 1 -PropertyType 'DWORD' -Force

Tóth Zoltán · Answer 5 · 2016-05-11T18:43:42.197

6

You can change the iis AppPool identity to your actual windows user, if it is a local machine.

edited May 11 '16 at 18:43

answered Dec 04 '13 at 15:04

Tóth Zoltán

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I was recently bitten by this "feature", which I'd not seen before, when your answer made me realize it's because I just switched _from_ an actual user account to the apppoolidentity. – drzaus May 04 '15 at 14:10

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 12 '09 at 11:54

your answer is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241736.aspx

If you are debugging a legitimate scenario that causes this warning to appear, and want to suppress it, there is a registry setting that allows you to do this. Remember to re-enable the warning after you are done with the scenario.

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 18 '17 at 21:08

This is not a direct answer to the question, but it circumvents the security message and also provides a faster way to attach to a previously attached process:

install Reattach extension
attach using Reattach and the message is bypassed
re-attaching (Ctrl-R + Ctrl-[1-5]) to a previous process has the same benefit

SliverNinja - MSFT · Answer 8 · 2015-02-25T19:39:21.040

Powershell variant...replace $vsversion with the version you want to apply it to.

Note: Save your work before running this. All running VS instances will be stopped. If you don't end open VS instances - the value will not be retained.

$vsversion = "12.0" # VS 2013 (optionally 11, 10, 9, etc.)
kill -name devenv # end any existing VS instances (required for persisting config change)
Get-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\$vsversion\Debugger" -Name DisableAttachSecurityWarning -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue # query value (ignore if not exists)
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\$vsversion\Debugger" -Name DisableAttachSecurityWarning -Value 1 # assign value

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Feb 01 '18 at 16:55

3

A Visual Studio extension is available for VS2015 and VS2017: "Attach To All The Things":

You can bind "Attach To IIS" to whatever key chord you like using the usual process.

answered Feb 01 '18 at 16:55

Marc Gravell

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score 2 · Answer 10 · answered Apr 11 '12 at 14:40

so, the only thing that would work for me with Visual Studio 2010 on x64/Win7 is to update both nodes, including the Wow6432Node.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Debugger]
"DisableAttachSecurityWarning"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Debugger]
"DisableAttachSecurityWarning"=dword:00000001

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Jun 09 '16 at 09:47

A powershell variation based on existing answers from SliverNinja and Martin Hollingsworth. This has been tested with Visual Studio 2015 on a win7/x64 environment. The script will ask you to close Visual Studio if it's running (won't try to kill it).

$vsversion = "14.0" # VS 2015 (optionally 12, 11, 10, 9, etc...)
$disable = 1 # set to 0 to enable the warning message

# not using Get-Process here because powershell instance can be 64 bit and devenv is 32 bit
if (!(get-wmiobject win32_process -filter "name='devenv.exe'")) {
    # Create or (force) update the property
    New-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\$vsversion\Debugger" -Name DisableAttachSecurityWarning -Value $disable -PropertyType 'DWORD' -Force
    Write-Host Done!
}
else {
    Write-Error "Please close Visual Studio first!"
}

Turn off Visual Studio Attach security warning when debugging IIS

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