This may not seem like a very helpful comment as it does not address your  
specific issue, but it may be the best advice you ever receive:

    "Don't use Visual SourceSafe for anything, ever."

And here's a few reasons why:

http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/windev/sourcesafe.html
http://www.wadhome.org/svn_vs_vss.txt
http://www.developsense.com/testing/VSSDefects.html
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q248240
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/150643/EN-US/

1).  VSS does not maintain all previous versions of all files in all  
circumstances (and therefore is useless for its intended purpose).
2).  VSS is prone to repository corruption.
3).  VSS is insecure (anyone can mess around with the shared files it  
uses).
4).  VSS is slow (complete, uncompressed files are sent to the client for  
every operation since there is no server process).
5).  VSS is unusable remotely (even if you get it to work over a VPN,  
operations will time out because it is so slow).
6).  VSS is not safe for multiple users.
7).  VSS is unsafe with multiple timezones (or even just multiple clients  
where the clocks are not synchronised).
8).  VSS does not support multiple working copies of a single project.
9).  The VSS branch and share semantics are unintuitive and dangerous.
10).  VSS sometimes likes to capitalise some of the directory names when  
you import, so your Java packages get screwed up.
11).  VSS only works with Windows operating systems.

And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head, I have a much  
longer list lying around somewhere.  Use anything else (Subversion,  
Perforce, Bitkeeper, CVS), just save yourself the hassle of VSS going  
wrong (and it will).

And if you're still not convinced, take a look in the ss.ini files on your  
SourceSafe "server" and tell me that you want to use software that does  
things that way.

Dan.