Continuum Concepts

Logitech G15 Macros Not Working in Visual Studio (Solved)

I had the weirdest problem. My Logitech G15 Programmable Keyboard's macros (assigned to the G Keys) were not running in Visual Studio. At first I thought they were not working at all, but then I noticed they worked fine in Notepad and just about every other app I had running. So why not Visual Studio? I could record them there, but not execute them. Weird!

Well, because I do web development on IIS, I need to run Visual Studio as an Administrator. Since I run the Logitech G-series Keyboard Profiler under my normal, limited user context, it was Vista's security that was preventing my G keys from working. The amount of interaction between limited-user-run apps and administrator-run apps is severely limited, so that limited user apps cannot inherit the administrative rights of administrator-run apps. Makes sense.

The solution: Run the Logitech G-series Keyboard Profiler as an administrator. It will now have the permissions to inject keystrokes into applications run by an administrator account!

Security Warning: By doing this, you're trusting the keyboard profiler. You're trusting that it won't accidentally mess up your system, and you're trusting that it doesn't have any exploits that malicious users could use to get to the rest of your system. I personally do not think this is a significant risk. It's a risk you probably wouldn't even think about if you were using Windows XP. If you keep your system clean, this should be a "hole" you can live with. Just my opinion.