How Do I Allow my Visual Studio .NET Projects to Run from a Network Location?

When you try to create a new project in Visual Studio .NET 2003 on a network drive, you might get the following error:

The project location is not fully trusted by the .NET runtime. This is usually because it is either a network share or mapped to a network share not on the local machine. If the output path is under the project location, your code will not execute as fully trusted and you may receive unexpected security exceptions. Click OK to ignore and continue. Click CANCEL to choose a different project location.

You get this error because by default .NET framework does not fully trust network locations. It's easy, however, to grant this trust to your projects, or your entire Visual Studio Projects folder.

To grant permission to all your projects in your Visual Studio Projects folder located on the network, follow these 8 steps:

  1. Open Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Configuration which you'll find under Administrative Tools in the Control Panel.
  2. Expand Runtime Security Policy | Machine, | Code Groups | All_Code | LocalIntranet_Zone
  3. In the right-hand pane, click Add a Child Code Group.
  4. In the dialog that follows choose Create a new code group and fill in a Name like Visual Studio Projects.
  5. Optionally, provide a Description for the Code Group. (You'll see the description when you click a Code Group in the left tree, helping you identify the various Code Groups you may have) .
  6. In the Condition Type drop down, choose URL
  7. For the URL field, type something like this:

    file://YourServer/My Documents/Visual Studio Projects/*

  8. Under Use existing permission set, choose FullTrust (that is, if you trust your own applications. If you don't, choose a different permission set or create a new one).

That's it; from now on, you can successfully open existing or create new applications on in the folder Visual Studio Projects on your network drive.

Note that the name LocalIntranet_Zone is a bit misleading. It seems that this only relates to the security settings as found in Internet Explorer. However, this is not the case; these settings will apply to projects (and applications) you try to open from the network .

If you keep getting the same error, even after you configured your machine, take a look at this post as suggested by Stonie. There's a fair chance your project has been marked as "downloaded from the Internet" which can result in the same error.


Where to Next?

Wonder where to go next? You can post a comment on this article.

Doc ID 364
Full URL https://imar.spaanjaars.com/364/how-do-i-allow-my-visual-studio-net-projects-to-run-from-a-network-location
Short cut https://imar.spaanjaars.com/364/
Written by Imar Spaanjaars
Date Posted 02/26/2005 17:48
Date Last Reviewed 05/24/2006 20:30
Listened to when writing Riot by Dead Kennedys (Track 9 from the album: Plastic Surgery Disasters + In God We Trust)

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