Visual Studio 2005 Freezing

Question

I am running Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition and I am having trouble as it is freezing quite a lot.

I have the freezing issue when I save files or change what I am doing. By 'change what I am doing' I really mean anything. I might be editing a file and then click on a file in the Solution Explorer and then the IDE will freeze. I might just change between files that I am working (using the file tabs). I would say that the freezing occurs more often when I am working on projects that contain a large number of files.

The freezing is very frustrating as I literally have to sit and wait, or make a coffee.

I have installed SP1 and have not noticed any difference. I have also followed the steps outlined on '.Net Tip of the Day': http://dotnettipoftheday.org/tips/speedup_visual_studio.aspx. I did notice a difference from the changes suggested, the IDE runs faster but I still get my freezing problem as often.

My PC does not have the greatest spec, it has a Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz with 2GB RAM, but I think it should be sufficient. I have experienced the same problem on new and faster PCs too.

If anyone has any ideas or advice I will be very grateful.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I had similar issues on a similar spec machine - I resolved them with two steps that have completely transformed my user experience.

1. Upgrade your memory to 4Gb - any swapping that occurs because of memory used by the OS or other running applications has a big impact on the usability of VS.

2. Add another physical hard drive to your machine and keep your solution and source files on a different physical drive (not just a different logical partion) from your OS and VS install.

My machine has gone from struggling to page down in the IDE to being fully interactive with much reduced compile times.