How to get rid of the VMware error when starting Visual Studio 2012, but without disabling VMDebugger add-in?

Question

I am getting the following error when starting Visual Studio 2012 as unprivileged user:

An error has occurred while trying to access the log file. Logging may not function properly.

A casual web search showed that the issue used to exist with VMware 6 beta, back in 2006. I also found one other user who experiences the same in a more recent VS version (2008) and it started only recently.

The title of the message box indicates that this comes from VMware. I have VMware 9 Workstation installed. The problem could be related to system updates or the update 2012.2 CTP and hasn't gone with the final 2012.2 update package.

The question:

How can I get rid of the error without actually disabling the VMDebugger add-in?

Temporary workaround:

There is a workaround, disabling VMDebugger in the "Add-in Manager". However, it even seems that unprivileged users are unable to successfully disable it. I had to start VS as admin (I am using SuRun for the purpose) to disable it and the error not reappearing upon next start of the IDE.

Answer 1

I had the exact same problem, this is how I solved it.

I monitored devenv.exe using procmon to find the log path, on my computer it was: %TEMP%\vmware-username

I checked the permissions on the log directory, and discovered that my user had no access - neither read nor write! I gave myself full access and deleted the old log files. That solved it for me.

I think this happened because UAC was disabled when I installed VS and VMware.