How to get rid of the VMware error when starting Visual Studio 2012, but without disabling VMDebugger add-in?

0xC0000022L picture 0xC0000022L · Apr 7, 2013 · Viewed 7.5k times · Source

I am getting the following error when starting Visual Studio 2012 as unprivileged user:

An error has occurred while trying to access the log file. Logging may not function properly.

A casual web search showed that the issue used to exist with VMware 6 beta, back in 2006. I also found one other user who experiences the same in a more recent VS version (2008) and it started only recently.

The title of the message box indicates that this comes from VMware. I have VMware 9 Workstation installed. The problem could be related to system updates or the update 2012.2 CTP and hasn't gone with the final 2012.2 update package.

The question:

How can I get rid of the error without actually disabling the VMDebugger add-in?

Temporary workaround:

There is a workaround, disabling VMDebugger in the "Add-in Manager". However, it even seems that unprivileged users are unable to successfully disable it. I had to start VS as admin (I am using SuRun for the purpose) to disable it and the error not reappearing upon next start of the IDE.

Answer

thomfre picture thomfre · Sep 5, 2013

I had the exact same problem, this is how I solved it.

I monitored devenv.exe using procmon to find the log path, on my computer it was: %TEMP%\vmware-username

I checked the permissions on the log directory, and discovered that my user had no access - neither read nor write! I gave myself full access and deleted the old log files. That solved it for me.

I think this happened because UAC was disabled when I installed VS and VMware.