I am using WebAii from ArtOfTest to automate our Web UI testing. But one day it stopped working. While the tests were trying to launch Internet Explorer and navigate to an URL, the browser would just sit there for about 30 seconds and WebAii would then fail the test because of a timeout exception that it throws.

Figure 1: WebAii tests timing out while connecting to IE

Here is the exception message:

QuickStarts_NUnit_CS.Advanced.ExtensibleWebAiiEvents:
System.TimeoutException : Wait for condition has timed out


at ArtOfTest.Common.WaitSync.CheckResult(WaitSync wait, String extraExceptionInfo)
at ArtOfTest.Common.WaitSync.For[T](Predicate`1 predicate, T target, Boolean invertCondition, Int32 timeout)
at ArtOfTest.WebAii.Core.Manager.WaitForBrowserToConnect(Int32 browserIndexToWaitFor)
at ArtOfTest.WebAii.Core.Manager.LaunchNewBrowser(BrowserType browserToLaunch, Boolean waitForBrowserToConnect, ProcessWindowStyle windowStyle)
at ArtOfTest.WebAii.Core.Manager.LaunchNewBrowser()
at QuickStarts_NUnit_CS.Advanced.ExtensibleWebAiiEvents() in C:\Documents and Settings\klausg\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\QuickStarts_NUnit_CS\Tests\Advanced.cs:line 115

Failed attempts

I googled the web and found some leads:

• Check your security policy regarding Named Pipes
• Disable any Internet Explorer plug-ins

I verified these settings and still no luck.

Success

Coincidentally I came across the ugly message box that informs you about the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration on Windows 2003 Server R2, where I was running the tests on. I said: “Hey, lets try disabling this feature.” and voila the unit tests didn’t fail anymore because of the connection timeout to Internet Explorer.

Figure 2: Tests are running again

Ausblick

Look at this blog post if you don’t know how to disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration on Windows 2003 Server and on Windows 2008 Server: http://www.tellingmachine.com/post/How-to-disable-IE-Enhanced-Security-Configuration-on-Windows-2003-Server-R2-and-Windows-2008-Server-R2.aspx