What is overriding Windows proxy settings (inserting "vsts-proxy-installed-indicator") and how do I turn it off?

Question

I have a number of machines, all of which have Visual Studio installed, where something (presumably visual studio) is overriding the proxy settings: setting up localhost and some random port for both HTTP and HTTPS. In the "Do not use proxy server" box, it puts <vsts-proxy-installed-indicator> which is presumably a tag so it know it's done it.

This occasionally prevents browsers from working on my desktop, and more recently, changed it on our build server which caused the code signing step (which connects to an external timestamp server) to fail all day until I finally found this proxy issue.

What is changing these settings? Why is it changing them? How do I turn it off?

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Note, there is a serverfault question about this as well: What is inserting “vsts-proxy-installed-indicator”? but since this is a Visual Studio-specific question, I thought it might be better to ask here.

Answer 1

Keep <vsts-proxy-installed-indicator> in the exception list along with the other proxy and exception settings. This will solve the issue.

Answer 2

This happens because you've enabled "ASP.NET Client Proxy for IntelliTrace and Test Impact" in the Test Settings.

To disable - VS2010: Open the menu Test > Edit Test Settings > (select the current active test settings), select Data and Diagnostics and disable the mentioned setting.

To disable - VS2013: Double click on the enabled* .testsettings-file in the solutions explorer, select Data and Diagnostics and disable the mentioned setting.

*) You'll find which one is enabled (if any) under TEST> Test settings