I ran into an interesting problem while trying to create a demo for Visual Studio 2008 using the Web Test macro recorder (IE plugin) and Internet Explorer 8. 

 

The test website I had was on my local PC so I started recording and typed in the localhost address.  Suddenly, the macro recording stopped and only had a message stating the the recording had to be initiated via Visual Studio.  Also, the recording had stopped within Visual Studio as well … no steps were added to the test script.

 

After scratching my head, searching the net, and gazing into the air I realized that IE was switching from the Internet Zone (for the default about:blank page) to the Local Intranet Zone (for my web site).  To fix this, I manually added about:blank to my list of Intranet sites and everything worked as expected.

 

I am not sure if there is any more legit fix to this but this worked fine for me!