I’m using Google Chrome (Go google!) as my system default browser on Windows 7.  But I want to use Internet Explorer for debugging web apps from VS 2010, as VS apparently have some issues figuring out how to shut down the process of my tab, when I Exit the debugger…

I used the standard “Browse With” dialog, and used the “Set as Default” button, and that works. Untill I restart VS.NET ..  On next startup it has defaulted back to my System Default Browser.

I tried a number of things, but VS just kept setting the browser back to Chrome. Pretty annoying!  Others are seeing it too,

Scott Hanselmann link …  The VS Default Switcher …    but their solutions didn’t quite work for me.

Solution

Googling around, I could see that the VS.NET gets the browser information from this file:

C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Browsers.xml

I could see that Google Chrome kept getting written back into the file, so I thought .. .what happens if I make it Read Only?  After setting the default to Internet Explorer off course …

And tadaaa .. it worked. From here on, it just picks up IE from the browsers.xml file, and IE is permanently set as default browser.  No more going behind my back …. “so you cant change that file?  Goooood”