Enable Typemock Isolator for a Non-Admin User
Generally speaking, it’s good practice to develop as a non-administrative user so you can make sure your applications will run for non-admin users and so you won’t do any damage to your environment as you develop. Unfortunately, some things end up forcing you to develop as an admin because they require rights that most non-administrative users don’t have.
Typemock Isolatorno longer has to be one of those things that forces you to run as an administrator.
The Isolator install guide has a “Security” section that outlines the various registry keys and files that Isolator needs read/write access to. If you give your non-admin user the rights to these keys and files, that non-admin user can start, stop, and link Typemock Isolator with other profilers.
In a recent round of troubleshooting, I ended up writing a program to modify the ACL on the requisite keys and files as found on the target machine. The result is EnableTypemockForNonAdmin - a command-line program that automates this permissions setup process.
This program will make permissions changes to files and your registry. Read the enclosed readme file and make sure you fully understand what’s going to happen before you run it.
Usage is simple. Open a command prompt as an administrator and run the program, passing in the name of the non-admin user you want to have access to Typemock Isolator.
EnableTypemockForNonAdmin.exe YOURDOMAIN\yourusername
Standard disclaimers apply - I’m not responsible for any damage done by the program; YMMV; use at your own risk; etc.
UPDATE 5/4/2010: Typemock Isolator 6.0.3 (not yet released at the time of this writing) may fix these issues if you are using Typemock Isolator with TestDriven.NET to make this program unnecessary. Jamie Cansdale from TestDriven.NET has commented below and left a link to a registry file you can install to make things work without changing permissions. I will leave this program available as it is still helpful for earlier versions of Typemock Isolator and/or TD.NET, and may still be required for command-line builds. (We’ll have to see once Isolator 6.0.3 comes out.)
UPDATE 5/5/2010: I verified that with Typemock Isolator 6.0.3 and NCover 3.4.3 the registry additions provided by Jamie Cansdale will allow you to run as a non-admin user (both using the Typemock Config Tool and TestDriven.NET), though I can’t speak to earlier versions of Isolator or linking with profilers other than NCover. These keys are also custom additions to your registry, so it’s a little “non-standard.” YMMV. I think the permissions change is probably the route I’ll continue to go until the profiler companies and/or Typemock start shipping these tweaks as supported items out of the box.
UPDATE 1/20/2011: Typemock Isolator 6.0.6 now requests read/write permissions on the registry key where the license info is kept right when the config tool starts up, regardless of whether you’re going to modify the value. I updated the EnableTypemockForNonAdmin tool to version 1.0.1.0 and added that registry key to the list of keys to give your non-admin user permissions to. Download now - free!