FIX: Regular Users Cannot Open the VSS Database on Windows 2000-Based Computers

View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q253301

SYMPTOMS

If you log in to Visual SourceSafe on a Microsoft Windows 2000-based computer, the following error message appears:

The database does not exist. Please select another.

If you browse to the location of the srcsafe.ini file, select the file, and then click OK, you return to a blank list of available SourceSafe databases.

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CAUSE

This behavior occurs because users who are not in the administrator's group have read-only permission to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SourceSafe.

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RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, use Regedt32 to grant full control or special access to the registry key.

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Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

This bug has been fixed in Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 5 (SP5).

To download service pack 5, see the Visual Studio Product Updates page on the following Microsoft Web site at:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/Aa718353.aspx (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/Aa718353.aspx)

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MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce the Behavior

Install Visual SourceSafe on a Windows 2000-based computer.
Create a regular user with no administrative privileges.
Log in to the Windows 2000-based computer as the user you created in step 2.
Open the Visual SourceSafe explorer and log in as Admin with no password. Note that you receive the error message listed in the "Symptoms" section.

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