The Web Recorder must be launched from within System Center Operations Manager

Today I ran into an issue where I couldn’t find the Microsoft Web Recorder Helper that is used to record browser sessions in order to create a web application in System Center Operations Manager. It can usually be found under “Tools” > “Explorer bars” or “View” > “Explorer bars” but it wasn’t there:

Then I found this article where Kevin Holman explains a workaround which almost worked for me, but not entirely:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2009/06/19/web-application-recorder-r2-the-recorder-bar-missing-in-ie.aspx

The problem appears to be caused by the fact that OpsMgr launches the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer, whereas in a 64-bit version of Windows, the 64-bit version of the add-on is being registered. Here is the suggested workaround:

1. Open the web application editor
2. Click ‘Start Capture’
3. Close the 32-bit browser that is being launched
4. Start Internet Explorer (64-bit) from the start menu
5. If the web-recorder isn’t displayed in Internet explorer, launch it by clicking ‘View’ > ‘Explorer bars’ > ‘Web Recorder’

This one didn’t work for me however. The web recorder was displayed but all was greyed out and showed “The Web Recorder must be launched from within System Center Operations Manager”:

As always since the introduction of Windows Server 2008 / Vista etc. you should be aware of UAC and selecting “Run as administrator” when launching the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer for this workaround did the trick.