Visual SourceSafe 2005 Webservice Issue

I got the chance today to install Visual SourceSafe 2005 on a new development server. One of the most exciting new features that I want to play around with is the Webservice functionality (accessed via the Visual SourceSafe Internet plugin for Visual Studio 2005).

I configured the server, and changed my Source Control to the "Internet" version, but I could not connect to the web service from my client. All that I would see is the following messagebox:

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Visual SourceSafe Internet
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Cannot contact the Visual SourceSafe Internet Web Service or cannot access the specified database.

The server returned the following error: A connection with the server could not be established (0x80072EFD)
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OK
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I next tried to connect to the web service URL from Internet Explorer. This time, I got a familiar ASP.NET error screen. But, it was hiding the true error from me due to the configuration.

So, I changed the VSS web service's web.config to set <customErrors mode="Off">

Now I got a better error message:

The current identity (NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE) does not have write access to 'C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files'.

Now, there's something that I can finally work with!

The fix was to grant the NETWORK SERVICE account (since my machine is W2k3 server, otherwise, it would be the ASPNET account) the Modify permissions for C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files.