  Anisotropic magneto resistances and intrinsic adiabatic transport features
are generated on quantum Hall samples based on an (Al,Ga)As/GaAs
heterostructure with alloyed Au/Ge/Ni contacts. We succeed to probe the
microscopic origin of these transport features with a cryogenic scanning force
microscope (SFM) by measuring the local potential distribution within the
two-dimensional electron system (2DES). These local measurements reveal the
presence of an incompressible strip in front of contacts with insulating
properties depending on the orientation of the contact/2DES interface line
relatively to the crystal axes of the heterostructure. Such an observation
gives another microscopic meaning to the term 'non-ideal contact' used in
context with the Landauer-B\"uttiker formalism applied to the quantum Hall
effect.
