How to speed up Visual Studio 2008? Add resources?

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2008 (with the latest service pack) I also have ReSharper 4.5 installed. ReSharper code analysis / scanning is disabled. OS: Windows 7 Enterprise Edition

I need a lot of time (2 minutes) to start the debugger, the compiler, and if I save the file in the app_code folder, it will block for 2 minutes.

I have 12 GB of ram, and as you can see, I have many more. This screenshot was taken when VS was frozen / locked.

Can I allocate more bar for VS? Or are there any other settings I can make?

Answer 1

Looks like a slow hard drive or a slow network to me. Any of the relevant files stored on the network?

Answer 2

Try removing ReSharper and see what happens. Is there an active virusman? What happens if you turn it off for a moment?

Oh, and can you move your classes from app_code to an external library? I'm not sure, but I think a change in app_code could lead to a complete recompilation.

Answer 3

Probably the speed of the hard drive. This blog post from scottgu is a bit outdated, but it is still relevant: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/01/tip-trick-hard-drive-speed-and-visual- studio-performance.aspx

Answer 4

This may not affect everything, but memory constraint problems are quite common with ReSharper. However, I was addicted to this, and improving the speed of its removal did not outweigh the pain in withdrawing ...

By default, Visual Studio will only process 2 GB of memory. However, you can do this with lots of memory (so it will use up to 3 GB) by following these steps (from this post by Stephen Harman ):

• Be sure to back up devenv.exe
• Using the Visual Studio Command Prompt, browse to C: \ Program Files (x86) \ Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0 \ Common7 \ IDE \
• run the following command: editbin /LARGEADDRESSAWARE devenv.exe

Also, see this post for some more great tips on overall Visual Studio performance. Every bit helps.

Try this and get a faster (10,000 rpm) hard drive. Many reports ( here on SO , on Coding Horror , and elsewhere ) indicate an increase in performance from the standard 5400 rpm to a faster model.

Answer 5

Try starting the “Process Monitor” and use the “Tools / Process Activity Summary” to show if any of the processes on your system causes a lot of file access, registry access or network activity. If you filter the log for the name of the file you are trying to save, then it may also show some API errors or permission problems that cause a slowdown.

Answer 6

A faster hard drive might be your solution. Jeff Atwood has a record of using a 10,000 rpm hard drive on a computer.

Another question here on Stackoverflow is about the slowdown of Visual Studio due to the launch of antivirus scanners.

I myself came across large solutions that take a lot of time, CodeRush Express makes things work slowly, background processes work, which leads to a slowdown.

Good luck with your hunt. It would be interesting to know what you find.

Answer 7

Are you sure you are using the latest version of ReSharper (4.5.2)? In the latest update, high performance was achieved. Of course, I have a 28-project web solution with 1400 source files, a 5400 RPM drive (yes, I know), and the startup time for debugging the project is less than 30 seconds.