Sheng Jiang 蒋晟

Update: it looks like a lot of people are hitting this page by mistake. If you don’t write software for a living then this page is probably not for you.

Download: https://jiangsheng.net/Documents/IE8AddZone.zip

Prerequisite: Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)

This program is designed to temporary circumvent the “An add-on for this web site failed to run. Check the security settings in Internet options for potential conflicts” error in Visual Studio after installing IE8. For more details about this problem, visit https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=425510

Update: the VC team’s workaround is at http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2009/03/28/some-vs2005-and-vs2008-wizards-pop-up-script-error.aspx. However, I still suggest copying other settings from a restricted zone before modify the 1207 key.

Clicking the create button will create another Internet Explorer security zone with the id 1000 that will affect all urls not included in other zones. This will allow separate security settings for webbrowser control hosting application such as Visual Studio. If settings are copied from a trusted configuration such as “my computer”,a webbrowser control hosting application may not experience the aforementioned error.

Security Remarks: do not visit unsecured web site or use email software on the same computer after creating the new zone as the security impact of the new zone is not yet tested. Applications that host webbrowser control should implement their own security manager if they want to run ActiveX in the browser control.

If you received a fix from the IE team for this problem, please delete the zone created by this problem by clicking the delete button. Visit https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=425510 for the status of this problem.

For more information about adding zones to IE, visit http://www.nthelp.com/50/addazone.htm .

For more information about Internet Explorer security zones, visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182569

For more information about Visual C++ wizards, visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730846(VS.80).aspx

Suspicious url actions from Regmon logs:

• 2700 URLACTION_INPRIVATE_BLOCKING (Don’t think Visual Studio know what is the private mode)
• 2106 URLACTION_FEATURE_DATA_BINDING (a lot of these in the registry log)
• 1207 URLACTION_ACTIVEX_OVERRIDE_REPURPOSEDETECTION (not sure what this is doing, but it is the only one between URLACTION_ACTIVEX_MIN and URLACTION_ACTIVEX_MAX)
• 160A URLACTION_HTML_INCLUDE_FILE_PATH