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!