Visual Studio 2008 shipped with a feature to automatically enable script debugging when starting IE8 from Visual Studio. This means the old technique of selecting Tools|Options and switch to the Advanced tab or the Internet Options dialog and checking “Disable script debugging (Internet Explorer)” is not going to disable script debugging from your Visual Studio 2008 sessions. And, many times, given these conditions you want to be able to debug your script code.
Unfortunately, according to greggm’s blog at--http://blogs.msdn.com/greggm/archive/2009/04/06/disabling-script-debugging-in-vs-2008-ie8.aspx for his post—this causes a problem. For web sites that create a large number of dynamic documents performance can get sluggish and there was no way to turn script debug off. Borrowed from his original post here are the steps to turn off script debugging:
- Open an instance of Windows Explorer.
- Change folders to c:\windows\system32
- Right-click on cmd.exe and click Run as administrator. This will start a cmd.exe session in Administrator mode
- Run your registry editor by type regedt32 at the command prompt
- Click on the root “Computer” and select Export to export (that is, backup) a copy of your registry
- Copy and paste the following text into the cmd window and press enter
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\AD7Metrics\Engine\{F200A7E7-DEA5-11D0-B854-00A0244A1DE2} /v ProgramProvider /d {4FF9DEF4-8922-4D02-9379-3FFA64D1D639} /f
Script debugging will now be permanently disabled on your PC. To re-enable script debugging repeat the numbered steps and enter the following command for step 6:
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\AD7Metrics\Engine\{F200A7E7-DEA5-11D0-B854-00A0244A1DE2} /v ProgramProvider /d {170EC3FC-4E80-40AB-A85A-55900C7C70DE} /f
I tested the steps to see if they work and they seemed to work as advertised. If you have 64-bit Windows or are using Visual web Developer then the command strings and the version of the registry editor you use will vary slightly. Check out the original blog post for more information on the variations. I always like to know details. The /f switch for reg add forces an overwrite without a prompt of existing registry values, /v is the value name under the selected key, and /d specifies the data to assign the key. You can find out more about the reg command by typing reg /? at the command prompt.
As always it is recommended that you save a copy of your registry before making any changes and routinely back up you PC and servers.