Perfect Answer.

Once I ran Studio with full admin, it revealed that the 3 projects suffered the same problem.

All 3 were set to run using IIS instead of the builtin Webserver. And all 3 had IIS pointing at different directories than those that the projects were located in.

This is because (Being a little careful occasionally) I copied the solution folder before trying out VS2008 but forgot to tell IIS.

After I changed the virtual directories to point at the new locations, I was able to run Studio in non admin and everything went through prefectly.

I will test properly in the morning but as far as I am concerned this is fixed.

I will until after the morning's tests and also to hear from wait to hear from Wudbaer before I mark the post as an answer but I'm very happy with this.

Great stuff Mikhail. Thanks very much indeed :D

 Ok I was talking out of my ****. It's late... I didn't change Studio back out of Admin mode before rerunning the test.

However my solution now appears to be good.

I have since changed my apps to not use IIS and the conversion does indeed complete withour admin.

Following this, I tried to change 1 back to IIS and as I did I got  a warning saying that I couldn't do this withour running in Admin mode.

This seems to complete the pattern.

It seems a shame that this continues to be the case even in 2008. but I can live with it :)

 

Cool, glad you are all set. The issue with admin mode is not VS bug really, it is rather catch 22. Access to IIS metabase is closed to regular users for security reasons. So VS cannot get access unless you run as admin. It is rather difficult to separate data only needed by VS and only needed at IIS runtime.

Mikhail Arkhipov (MSFT):

The issue with admin mode is not VS bug really, it is rather catch 22. Access to IIS metabase is closed to regular users for security reasons. So VS cannot get access unless you run as admin.

I mostly agree and I certainly understand.

The "bug" is in the fact that VS does not recognise that it does not have access and explain what is needed.
Ideally it should activate UAC and ask for permission to access the information required or state that the error is because it has insufficient permission to access some IIS meta data. And that a valid alternative might be to switch to using the internal web development server.

This information also fixed it for me ! I now started VS2008 with "Run as Administrator" and everything worked like a charm: The project got opened, IIS was configured accordingly, and I can compile and debug the project, so from were I'm standing it is also fixed. Thank you very much again, Mikhail !

 
Best regards,

 
Chandra 

It is true. I already opened a bug about providing better experience. The code does show explanation is several cases, but apparently missing a few.

I think the problem may be related to the IIS Virtual Directory of the Web Application.  First use INETMGR.EXE to ensure the virtual directory of the web application is set up correctly.  Second, on Vista make sure your run VS with Administrator privilages (ie right click Run As Administrator.)  Third, now try to open and migrate the solution.  Let us know if this helps.

I believe we have already each indicated that our migration went very smoothly as soon as we loaded vs using "Run as Administrator"

The remaining issue is really for those users out there who have not located this thread and may perform a similar action at some future point.

VS does not indicate that it requires said Admin privilages for this operation. Rather it's conversion process fails with a COMException which is less than useful.

 
I'm not sure what further information we can give you
 

We had the same problem here.. Me running xp iis6 and the other developer on the project running Vista iis7.
(I use localhost as path to iis, he uses a custom hostheader for the project) 

Every time i opend the project from subversion i got the same error..

Project loaded fine when I removed then 'bottom' section in the vbproj file. Right click on the project unable to load and click 'edit project file'. The file is loaded into an text editor..

Then i clicked reload projet( it now loads)..
UnChecked the "Apply server settings..." checkbox in properties|Web for the project, and removed the xxx.vbproj.user file from subversion..

Now it works..

This is due to IIS problem, under VISTA system, IIS7 is used, but probably in your old system, you used IIS6.

So be sure you also have "IIS6 management compatibility" tools installed in your VISTA system.

How: Control Pannel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows Features on or off -> IIS -> Windows management tools

 I had a similar issue, but in slightly different circumstance. I was working on a new machine (Vista SP1) that didn't yet have IIS even installed.

When I went to upgrade the web project, I got this error. Running as Admin did not fix the issue, but thanks to the suggestions in this forum, it pointed me to the fact that the upgrade was trying to access the IIS application linked in the web project. That didn't exist on my machine, and thus the error.

My solution was to create a new web project that ran inside the visual studio web server. I then compared and merged the new web project's settings with the old web project.

This effectively changed the old webproject to run in the vs web server instead of (the missing) IIS. I then re-ran the upgrade and it completed flawlessly.

 I do agree that the user experience on this issue could be improved. My user experience was sufficient only because it happened to include this forum :D