Today I tried to use the web recorder in Visual Studio to create some new web tests, but the recorder tool bar would not show in IE. A quick search found Diagnosing and fixing Web Test recorder bar issues, by Michael Taute which had several troubleshooting tips.

I ended up changing my home page which is about:blank (and loads when web recorder is launched) to belong to the local intranet zone, as this is where my test site is. That didn’t fix the problem initially, so I deleted the following two registry keys using the 32 bit registry editor (C:\Windows\SysWOW64\regedit.exe):

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Discardable\PostSetup\Component Categories\{00021493-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Discardable\PostSetup\Component Categories\{00021494-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

You need to make sure all instances of IE are closed before deleting the registry keys. Once I did this, my web recorder was up and running. I’ve left about:blank in the local intranet zone for now.