Drag and Drop of Files from Windows to Visual Studio not Working?

Do you ever drag and drop files from a Windows Explorer into Visual Studio running on Windows Vista? And have you noticed that sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't? When it doesn't work, Visual Studio shows the "stop" icon when you drag the files over the Solution Explorer. I ran into that issue a lot and it was driving me nuts....

Not a Bug...

Today I finally decided to file a bug for it on Microsoft Connect in the hopes it could be fixed some day. Before I filed the bug I searched the existing issues to see if others had reported the same problem already. And then I found this. Turns out, it's not a bug but it's by design. When you are running Visual Studio with administrative privileges it runs in a different security context than the Windows Explorer process. Windows then prohibits the two processes from communicating with each other.

There's no way around this other than turning off User Account Control.

Now at least I know what's causing this which makes it easier to work around or live with it.

Check out the reported issue on the Microsoft Connect site.


Where to Next?

Wonder where to go next? You can read existing comments below or you can post a comment yourself on this article .


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Feedback by Other Visitors of Imar.Spaanjaars.Com

On Thursday, July 02, 2009 2:54:34 PM Ane Sybesma said:
Of course! Thanks for sharing and please stop coding and enjoy your holiday :-)
On Thursday, July 02, 2009 3:19:52 PM Imar Spaanjaars said:
Can't.... stop..... coding..... must.... code....... ;-)

Imar
On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 4:38:39 PM mueen hamam said:
Is there no other way around this? I need to add some images from windows explorer into my solution explorer and I cant seem to do it, I have even tried doing it all through windows explorer i.e copying the files I want into the VB2010 folder and that hasnt worked either. Although they appeared in my soloution explorer they where unreadable with no format. Help please!
On Thursday, October 25, 2012 4:16:16 AM Imar Spaanjaars said:
Hi mueen,

Simply use copy and paste to work around this.

Cheers,

Imar

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Written by Imar Spaanjaars
Date Posted 07/02/2009 15:30