While working with the Trial version of VSD, I have encountered 2 serious system problems.

The first is I cannot open VSD by any normal means. By normal, I mean through the Start Menu, through a VSD Shortcut on the Desktop, by double-clicking a .vnu website file, or even navigating to the vsd.exe file itself and either double-clicking it, or right-clicking it and clicking on Open. The little green circle will spin for a couple of seconds and then stop, with nothing opening. I finally tried right-clicking the vsd.exe file, and clicked Run as Administrator. That opened VSD. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling VSD twice, with the same results. This is the only program that has ever required me to do this. Any thoughts?

The second problem is that VSD crashed on me twice while working on my website. Once while drawing a rectangular Shape box, and the second while trying to save a webpage I just worked on.

I like working with VSD to build my website, but these system problems are giving me some concern about the stability of the program.

Stew

This can happen even if you are running as an Administrator, and it is caused by Windows very strict security settings.

To fix this, right-click your Visual Site Designer shortcut icon and select Run as Administrator. This should properly launch Visual Site Designer for you. If it does, great! You can continue to launch the program in this way, or you can go a step further and configure the shortcut to always run as administrator. Here's how:

1. Right-click the shortcut icon, and click Properties.
2. Click the Compatibility tab.
3. Here, put a check mark by Run This Program as an Administrator.
4. Next, put a check mark next to Run This Program in Compatibility Mode For: and ensure Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2 is selected.
5. Click OK.


If you continue having problems you may also need to set the application as an exception to Windows Data Execution Prevention (DEP) feature. Normally if this is the culprit, you'll get a little bubble along the taskbar notifying you, which will allow you to set the offender as an exception.

One last option that could be the cause of this, and related to the DEP feature, is User Account Controls. This is the large window that appears in Vista asking you to "Allow" or "Deny" access to functions within programs. You can turn this off within your Control Panel > User Accounts window, along the left-hand pane.

All three options let you control your system exactly how you want and give you full access to do/run anything on the computer.

Thanks Scott! I configured the program to always Run as Administrator and in Compatibility Mode for Windows 7. That seems to have solved the problem of running VSD. Hopefully the crashes are an anomaly and won't be a future problem.

Stew