Problems with Visual Studio 2005
Well, it shipped.
Isn’t that great given the recurring problem at Redmond : nothing ever ships? As we speak, Visual Studio 2005 is out there … in the real world. Now duck!
News.com reports this, “Microsoft has rejected a request from developers to push back delivery of its oft-delayed Visual Studio 2005 in order to fix bugs. … Through a feedback form on the Microsoft Developer Network Web site, developer customers asked Microsoft to release a third beta of Visual Studio 2005, which is due for completion on Nov. 7.”
VS is so buggy it’s generated a barrage of howls from developers in many quarters. Even that shrinking violet, Mini-Microsoft has this to say :
If you can’t trust your compiler, man, your whole world starts falling apart. All of you Microsofties posting “whoo-hoo, we shipped!” to your blog I hope are going in next week and, after the cheering, put deep concerted effort into creating a near-term service pack for VS. I know we wander around joking that Orcas will really be a big service pack for VS 2005, but as of this week, no one is laughing. Our customers ~ our developers ~ deserve a lot better quality and we need to react quickly to avoid a deepening distrust.
Dear O dear! We need a service pack before we’ve had the service? There could be an infinite regression coming on here.
[Via News.com and Mini-Microsoft]
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POSTED IN: Corporate News, New Products, Visual Studio
201 opinions for Problems with Visual Studio 2005
Damon
Nov 16, 2005 at 7:47 pm
I have to say I have been disappointed w/ the quality of VS 2005. I had been using Beta 2 version since it was released back in April. I had even used it for current projects to see how well it worked. It seemed like it was able to see the debug symbols for things built w/ the DDK when the 2003 version simply wouldn’t work w/ them. It had no problem compiling everything that I was doing in VS 2003.
I have now upgraded to VS 2005 and started using it. Right out of the box, it will not compile projects that build flawlessly w/ Beta 2. It complains of undefined symbols (which are a part of VS 2005 itself). I have upgraded the DDK and I still get the same problem. If I go back a few versions in DDK, I get even more errors.
Overall, the application is incredibly slow compared to Beta 2. Upgrading to VS 2005 has been several steps backward from Beta 2. I am completely disappointed.
John
Nov 16, 2005 at 9:03 pm
Thanks for the feedback, Damon. Interesting info.
Les Stockton
Nov 17, 2005 at 5:08 am
I received a copy of Visual Studio 2005 after attending a Tech Ed event (MSDN) yesterday. After installing, the computer seems to run slowly and not sure why. Even when VS isn’t running, the system still seems to be sluggish. I’ve checked and Explorer seems to be logging activity even when the machine is fairly idle.
I’m running XP Home. The installation didn’t have any hiccups, so I was wondering if you might have an idea of what the problme is and how to resolve it or work around.
Philipp
Nov 23, 2005 at 4:17 pm
Crashes often, sometimes hangs so bad that only a reboot helps and performance is just ridiculous. Compared to VS.NET 2003 (which definitely has it’s issues), the quality of this product just sucks :-(
Mark Chequer
Dec 2, 2005 at 6:02 pm
I used Beta 1 … thought it was good, I used Beta II thought that was better …. I used the RTM thought my machine had a problem (continual crashing of VS 2005) and running slow. I reinstalled the whole machine, installed VS 2005 final and it crashes about 3-5 times a day (more if unlucky). … and runs slow.
I run 90% MS stuff so can not believe the developers at MS are not seeing this. I hope there is a OMG at ms and ‘I’ve found the problem’ and rush out a hot fix. This needs to be resolved.
Farhad Jalali
Jan 16, 2006 at 9:18 pm
After installing VS 2005, all application at my computers be run too slow! specially i have many problem in working with VS 2003 which still i’m using it!
what the hill should i do?
Nimesh
Jan 17, 2006 at 11:49 am
VS 2005 installs SQL server express edition with it by default. your PC may becoming slower becuse of it. try to stop the Sql Server Service and see if you are getting an improvement.
Jason
Jan 18, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Thanks for that feedback Nimesh and help to the community here!
Wade Maxfield
Jan 25, 2006 at 10:35 pm
VS 2005 express edition has crashed twice today working through the introductory videos. It takes my entire machine down with it, rebooting. I’m running Windows 2000 Professional, SP4 + updates.
It is bad that it crashes, worse that it reboots the entire machine. Some work gets lost each time, it seems. Does anyone have any suggestions to stop the reboots?
Alex
Mar 2, 2006 at 1:41 pm
I’ve got to echo the dissapointment here. I’ve been running VS 2005 Pro since it came out. I’ve been searching for tweaks and fixes since then. I have disabled SQL Server Express, I have turned off the splash screen, very minor improvements if any.
This application’s performance is completely horrible. I do realize it is doing a lot of things in the background that are not immediately obvious–but that in itself is a problem. Yes I like the featureset, but I would like to know what it’s doing that’s taking so much time, and how to disable some of the features that aren’t necessary for me.
I have about 3 crashes of the compiler a day, which cascades into the IDE crashing. Sometimes builds take over 10 minutes, somtimes less than 1 (of the same project.) The bug with not being able to design a form occasionally without exiting and rebuilding is terribly annoying, though I hear there’s a hotfix available upon request. Sometimes I come back to my computer and try to start typing in a code window, only to have to wait up to 5 minutes for VS2005 to wake up.
There’s really no excuse for all of this. This product should by no means have been released yet.
Dave
Mar 10, 2006 at 5:17 pm
I am very comfortable with Visual Studio 2003. I tried my first project with Visual Studio 2005 with my website http://www.hrsgroupinc.com, and I am so disappointed in Visual studio 2005. It is horrible!! Constantly bombs out starting the same project. I have to reboot my computer many times a day. I cannot belive microsoft could let this software out. It is extremely slow, and it just feels plain buggy. I thought since I was new to Visual studio 2005, it was my fault. Then I saw this site as well as other and Thank God I am not the only one with problems. I will now continue to develop in visual 2003 until the next serivce for vs2005 is out!!
Joe P.
Mar 20, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Hi. My name is Joe and I just tried to install VS 2005 Standard edition. This product is the pits. After numerous attempts to install it just hange then finally it fails. I am experienceing very bad performance since its attempted installation (not even that works!). Since I’ve uninstalled it, my computer has been behaving very slow with other apps. Thanks microsoft for a frustrating experience.
My installation hangs after installing the 2nd CD on “Executing action: RemoveTempHxDs”. I need toterminate all programs and shut down after this. Any ideas, please help.
Peter Samwel
Mar 20, 2006 at 10:22 pm
I agree. We have a solution with 300,00+ lines of code (C#) including 43 projects and VS2003 hummed with it. VS2005 on the other hand can’t even handle opening the web.config of one project to edit without having to “think” for 2-3 minutes. Here are my major gripes:
Editing sucks.
Intellisense sucks.
Refactoring REALLY sucks (please Lord let resharper get v2.0 out the door soon!).
Design view doesn’t mangle html, but it still sucks on speed.
Source Control support (for anything OTHER than VSS) is atrocious (random crashes doing get latest w/ Vault, not picking up changes, not actually checking in files, etc)
And if allllllll that simply wasn’t enough. I have to install a BETA2 patch for the damned IDE so i can have normal web projects. No offense, but the “websites” project type is only useful for hte most rudimentary and banal projects. IN THE REAL WORLD WE NEED FLEXIBILITY, not being forced into a model that MS thinks is “cool”.
It’s like they took .NET development from a hardcore environment and turned it into a playground for the “newbie developer”. Great, help new people get a handle on things, but STOP FORCING the rest of us to deal with it.
I have no faith left in MS on the IDE. As soon as I find an alternative (hell, notepad is ALMOST better productivity wise at this point), I’m recommending our entire shop get rid of VS2005.
Can you say ’sianora’?
Jason
Mar 20, 2006 at 11:17 pm
Yes, I removed Visual Studio 2005 the end of last week. I’m now back to relying on and using Dreamweaver for my web development needs. I can’t say “sianora”, I can say “sayanora”.
goon12
Mar 21, 2006 at 3:19 pm
I share an office with 3 other people, and hear nothing but sighs and groans. What’s the reason for all the sighs and groans? We upgraded to Visual Studio 2005. I deleted a file, through the Solution Explorer yesterday at 16:59, and it didn’t finish deleting the file until 17:04! Awesome!
Microsoft Weblog » Visual Studio Update
Mar 21, 2006 at 3:44 pm
[…] One of the more active posts lately with comments has been an entry I did awhile back involving Visual Studio 2005. If you’re currently using this product and would like to share your experiences, both good and bad, fire up your keyboarding skills and leave us a comment! […]
Roy Mash
Mar 30, 2006 at 9:34 pm
Like Joe P. my installation hung on “Executing action: RemoveTempHxDs”. I’m a little sorry I didn’t read this page before installation.
Cameron
Apr 2, 2006 at 7:20 am
I just read the posts here and I’m sorry to hear that so many of you have been having such bad experiences with Visual Studio 2005.
It’s unclear to me from many of the posts exactly what features and languages are being used.
I work on the VB.NET team and I’d like to help track down these issues so that at the very least we can fix them moving forward.
If your performance issues involve VB.NET (including Web) projects I’d like to work with you to identify the problem.
If not VB.NET I will try to get you in touch with the right folks.
I need to ask one favor though. If you do contact me please try to pick your top performance issue and try to be as specific as possible. Telling me it sucks doesn’t give me much to go on. The best scenario for me is either a repro solution or steps to make one.
If you would like help in tracking down your performance issue please contact me directly at cmccoll@microsoft.com
Cameron McColl
Visual Basic .Net Team
Microsoft Weblog » Visual Studio Complaints have been heard
Apr 2, 2006 at 10:09 pm
[…] Problems with Visual Studio 200504/02/2006 07:20 am22 Comments […]
Anup
Apr 6, 2006 at 8:45 pm
I have been facing a lot of problems with VS2005. Whether it’s C# or VB.NET it causes sluggishness as described by others on this blog.
The same application compiles under 2mins using VS2003, whereas on a VS2005 environment, it can take upto 10-12 mins (on a bad day).
I upgraded my processor to Dual core and it still gives me the same performance. I installed another Gig of RAM. I am the only person using 2Gb of RAM, and the performance has marginally improved.
Now on a bad day it takes about 8mins to compile. The average compile time is around 6mins.
Not bad for a product that costs $800!
While I am absolutely impressed with the things you can do with VS2005 and the .NET2.0 framework, I am not at all happy that we moved to VS2005 (on my decision as the Systems Architect).
Developers are now spending about 2-3minutes waiting for edits to show up on the screen. There are millions of ocassions when the screen just goes white for 2-4mins.
I would highly appreciate it, if someone could let us know the status of this situation. In an environment of Rapid Application Dev., VS2005 doesn’t do justice to it’s developers.
Cameron
Apr 6, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Anup,
Would you be willing to share your app with me so that we analyze the performance and track down why it’s taking so long?
If not would you be willing to run a tool that I can provide which will collect profile data on what the compiler is doing over time. With the profile we can often determine where we can improve our performance.
Either way I would be delighted to help you track down the issue and if appropriate provide any subsequent fixes that address the issue.
You can contact me directly at cmccoll@microsoft.com
Note that I personally can only help address VB.NET issues. If you need help with a C# solution I can direct your request to my C# counterpart.
I look forward to hearing from you and I promise to post our findings on this thread at a later date.
Thanks
Cameron McColl
VB.NET Development team.
Dan
Apr 7, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Visual Studio 2005 does seem to be a bit sluggish but that’s not my main concern. My main concern is being unable to build existing projects and consume web services that work with any other toolkit imagineable except for VS2005/WSE3.0. Right now the development schedule doesn’t allow for us to move forward with VS2005. I am anticipating a service pack that may make it less painful to upgrade.
Profpylons
Apr 19, 2006 at 9:45 am
At our development shop (we use C#) we’ve had build speed issues with Web Site and Web Service problems. After some investigation it seemed that the solutions are a bit over sensitive to the Build Order.. Get it right and it’s fairly quick, but get it wrong and you can be waiting minutes (I was waiting upto 8 minutes for a small (
Profpylons
Apr 19, 2006 at 2:43 pm
oh dear! That will teach me to use LT’s indiscriminately on peoples forums…
That should have read:
(I was waiting upto 8 minutes for a small (LT 5 pages) website to compile)
Then I launched into a big RANT about how much Web projects have changed since VS2003… So you’re probably better off without it!!
But my biggest gripe regarding VS 2005 is how much it has changed from the previous version. Things that were second nature thanks to a 5-year period of stability with the old environment. Top of my list are:
1) The tabs now open right to left. If I wanted the last file I opened I used to move the cursor Up and Right. Now it’s up and left. Sounds small but I wouldn’t like to count how many times I get this wrong.
2) The default setting to create all classes and interfaces without the public modifier. I don’t know about everyone else but I write far more public classes than private ones. An additional peeve is including the System.Text and .Generic namespaces.
I’ve changed this template now (once I found which copy on the disk actually loads into the IDE), but it’s still a pain on colleaugue’s PCs. I shouldn’t have needed to do this..
3) All the dialog boxes appearing too small and in the middle of the screen. The Unhandled Exception dialog is a good example. The first thing I have to do is move it so I can make it big enough to read the text. Either appear big enough, or appear off to one side so that I can make the box a decen size without running out of screen.
4) Being unable to edit whilst debugging (At least the majority of the time - I’ve not figured out the rules for when can or can’t). Quite often while the application is running I’ll see the need for an extra comment or a TODO, or change a Literal string for constant it should have had from the start. In VS2003 no problem, but now I have to remember where these are until the end of the debugging session to make the changes. (As an aside I used to enjoy watching the debugger step onto lines of code I’d moved or deleted).
I realise none of these are major problems - personally I don’t have a problem with speed or rebooting, which would be killers - but they do interupt my flow and thus concentration and feeling of productivity (cf http://headrush.typepad.com ). It now seems like the environment is no loger working for me, but I’m working for it…
Sobokan
Apr 26, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Even more annoying, within the timespan of one week i managed lose my form layout 6 times in different projects.. VS2003 already had this bug as well but not as bad as this one..
Also, if i leave the IDE open at night and come back in the morning, it has mysteriously consumed 300+ mb extra internal memory while doing nothing..
Also found quite a few bugs when deploying which drove me crazy until i figured that its not me generating bugs this time but VS2005..
Thank you once again Microsoft !!
vivek
Apr 27, 2006 at 5:32 am
I m working on vs 2005 from last 1 month,it is running web projects by using asp.net application development server using a port.though i created i virtual directory i was not able to run it through explorer,not on client machine.
i repaired .net framework 2.0 it helped me by running on same system with explorer but still pages r not available on client machine.
is there any conflict issue with iis & framework?
plz resolve the problem.
Andrew
Apr 28, 2006 at 5:22 pm
> Roy Mash Says:
> March 30th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
> Like Joe P. my installation hung on “Executing > action: RemoveTempHxDs”. I’m a little sorry I
> didn’t read this page before installation.
Good 2-hour long dinner does it: you come back - RemoveTempHxDs action completed. It’s just toying with you.
George
Apr 29, 2006 at 1:14 pm
I have been using .net for my web development for awhile but have resisted using it lan apps because of its disappointing performance. I have recently purchase VS 2005 and from what I’m reading the performance issues have not been adequately addressed.
Deane
May 2, 2006 at 7:01 pm
I am so happy to have found this thread. I thought I was going crazy…
Good God, this app is slow. I’m using on an ASP.Net project that’s hosted locally. It takes about a minute-and-a-half to save a file. Then two minutes to rebuild a tiny project with only four or five “compilable” files.
Every once in a while, it just stops responding for a minute while it’s thinking about something. I’ve only had to reboot once, but two to three minute hangs are not uncommon.
Daryl
May 4, 2006 at 2:29 pm
OK - I am seeing VERY slow performance as well. I have read through all of the threads.
Are there any solutions besides stopping SQL Server express?
Something has to be wrong - my desktop seems fine with VS2005, but it did not have VS2003 previously. My laptop flew with VS2003, but I un-installed 2003 before installing 2005. Could there be some confusion when VS2005 starts up with something left behind from 2003?
Cameron, does MS have anything to say?
Beaner
May 5, 2006 at 4:46 pm
The developers in my office installed VS 2005 Professional about two weeks ago. This week I opend up the IDE to check it out. I found if I create a new project (C# or VB), if I make the assembly name longer than a few characters (varies), that the project won’t run. A simple “Hello World” app appears to load and immediately unload without showing the form. I’ve made a couple dozen hello world apps trying to figure this out. Sometimes if I open the project properties and shorten the assembly name the form loads and runs as it should. My co-worker can load a project that won’t run on my machine and run it without problems on his. I’ve uninstalled, reinstalled, and repaired all without errors, and all without fixing the problem. I haven’t seen this problem anywhere else. Does anyone here have an idea?
bootstrap
May 8, 2006 at 5:21 am
I programmed with beta VS 2005 for about 8 months,
then unexpectedly and without warning it expired.
So I immediately downloaded, installed and started working with VS 2005 Express. I CAREFULLY followed the “remove old version first” warnings before I installed VS 2005 Express, even down to the exact order the uninstall “had to be done”.
Then I installed VS2005 express: !!! KABOOM !!!
In minutes, my computer started crashing - and I mean spontaneous black-screen then reboot.
This ONLY happened when I was running VS2005E, so I was pretty sure it was responsible. Immediately I ordered VS2005 Professional, since I need to compile for 64-bit anyway.
$800 and 5-days later I carefully uninstalled VS2005E and installed VS2005pro and !!! KABOOM !!! Same results.
So I low-level formatted my computer, which everyone knows is a major sacrifice, because it kisses many bought, paid-for and installed apps bye-bye because you can’t find those old keys, or the old keys do not work anymore because you appear to be installing software on two systems.
So I ran the completely new and clean install of WindowsXP64 for several hours and re-installed everything I could manage and made sure my system was completely stable and working perfectly.
Then I installed VS2005pro clean. !!! KABOOM !!!
So let me understand. Either I must earn my living writing software for Linux, or switch to another profession. Is that the McSoft position?
Cameron
May 8, 2006 at 2:50 pm
Hi folks,
Well it appears that more of you have joined this thread with a variety of issues from using VS2005. First off, I’m really sorry that your experience with the product has been anything less than amazing. Of course, I know that means little to you right now but if you are willing I’d like ot help each of you resolve your issue.
First off, my primary focus is with the performance of VB.NET projects in VS2005. If you contact vbperf@microsoft.com with the specifics of your problem I (or someone on our team) will work with you to indetify if this is a new issue or something that we have already addressed.
If you do not want to or do not have the time to spend trakcing down the issue please be aware that we have already found and resolved a number of significant performance issues which we hope to release in the next Service Pack for VS2005.
If your issue is not performance specifically but some kind of bug in the product I’d like to recommend you also post your issue on the VB.NET forums. These forums are monitired by many members of the VB.NET development and test teams here at Microsoft.
I’ll also post some specific follow comments on some of the postings that don’t seem to have been answered.
Cameron
May 8, 2006 at 3:01 pm
To Profpylons:
Regarding Build Time: Yes build order is very important in order to help the compiler avoid unnecessary recompilations. However, 8 mins for a small web project seems very wrong. I’m pretty sure the C# team would like to track down why this is happening. If you’re willing to help send mail to vbperf@microsoft.com and we’ll get you in touch with the C# perf Dev.
Your items 1 and 2 seem more personal preference and while I understand your position I’m also sure that if we changed it back we’d hear complaints from the folks who preferred the current design. I don’t know for sure but I would imagine the design was changed based on Beta feedback.
Item 3: Dialog boxes should always appear in the center of the screen. Nearly all window apps do this. I’ve never heard of the dialog being too small. As a general rule MS goes to great lengths to ensure our UI elements present correctly on all OS/Language configurations. You might want to post a specific example of this on the C# forums: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/default.aspx?forumgroupid=9&siteid=1
Item 4: VS2005 now supports Edit and Continue which means that you should be able to edit your source files while debugging. Again, if you’re not seeing that I recommend you post on the C# forums to find out why this is not happening.
Cameron
May 8, 2006 at 3:03 pm
A few posts back I suggested using the VB.NET forums and I forgot to include a link so here you go:
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/default.aspx?forumgroupid=10&siteid=1
Thanks
Cameron McColl
VB.NET
Cameron
May 8, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Sobokan:
You list 3 different issues.
For the the first and third issues these sound like bugs in the product. Are you able to reproduce these failry consistently? If so, contact me directly and I’ll forward your details to the right dev so we can figure out what is going on.
Regarding the extra memory consumption: contact vbpef@microsoft.com and we will help identify the source of this problem. There is a good chance that we may have already addressed this issue so there might be a fix already available here.
Cameron McColl
VB.NET
Cameron
May 8, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Vivek:
I recommend you post your issue on the ASP.NET forum to see if anyone knows the problem:
http://forums.asp.net/
Cameron McColl
VB.NET
Darren D'Orlando
May 9, 2006 at 10:23 pm
I have also had similar issues with building large (but not really) solutions in VS 2005. It takes several minutes using the IDE. So I started using msbuild to build the solution, which only take a few seconds. Then I just manually attach the processes to the IDE for debugging. Runs much better that way.
Frank
May 17, 2006 at 9:45 pm
We have all of the same issues. We have 4 developers on VS2005 with 2GB RAM and the product is still horrible with long compile times.
Microsoft, will you ever fix any of these problems. This is beyond frustrating. The only suggestion I’ve seen here is to make sure you get your build order correct. Is there anything else that can be done to tune this application. The product has made a joke of rapid development. It takes us 3times as long to get things done and its 10 times as frustrating to work with this product. Microsoft should be ashamed of releasing this.
John Spurlin
May 18, 2006 at 12:34 pm
I am wondering if this may have something to do with the temporary asp.net files when developing web projects.
I can take my current app, drop it on another box and everything compiles fast and the pages load fast. As I debug and start making changes to the project, it takes longer and longer for pages to load.
John Spurlin
May 18, 2006 at 12:45 pm
I also notice many times when the page is hanging, if I look to the status bar of the browser the WebResource.axd file is hung on a file. Sometimes it is just trying to download an image, for example, but it is taking “way too long” to load the image button.
Bruce Thomas
May 22, 2006 at 8:45 pm
I started work in VS2005 on 18 May. Only a week but I’ve put in about 90hrs. Biggest problems for me are:-
1. The times when it says it can’t find the dll for the DAL and the forms won’t appear in the designer. Sometimes this happens every time I debug-run, then it’ll be OK for a while.
2. I’m sure that things are happening that are not due to errors in my programming. I can’t see why I should suddenly be making 10x as many erros as usual. Just now I added some code for a context menu for a DevExpress grid that I’ve used repeatedly in 2003 and other bits of programme just stopped functioning. Events that seemed totally unrelated just stopped firing. So I deleted a couple of hours work then had a crash, where the report to MS took me to a Kb article about a fix where the red writing wasn’t what I’d seen. Suddenly the events were working again and I’m now re-adding the deleted code bit by bit, testing at each step to see what’s happening. This has happened several times today and so far I haven’t found a mistake.
3. From time to time the typing starts misbehaving. For example, I go to type MsgBox (for testing!), type M and suddenly () appears unbidden. I do backspace and remove one bracket then backspace again and it reappears. So I have to type what I want with a load of errors being flagged up then go back and remove the brackets.
If I shut down VS2005 and then re-open it the typing will be OK for a while then suddenly this will start again.
I getting very tired of these problems and am very likely to revert to 2003 if I do not find a way to get over these problems tomorrow.
I am not suffering from speed problems, but then I just bought a new, very fast computer so everything seems nifty compared with my old machine.
Bruce Thomas
May 22, 2006 at 9:11 pm
I just realised that this typing problem consistently starts after I do a debug-run and then continues until I close and restart VS.
Jos
Jun 8, 2006 at 5:43 pm
I haven’t worked with VS2005 that much, because of all the negative reactions. However, after installing VS2005 debugging ASP.NET in VS2003 gets extremely slow.
Jos
Jun 9, 2006 at 7:07 pm
As for the slow debugging: I have removed VS 2005 and all the other stuff that got installed together with it (including the .net 2.0 framework) and the temporary ASP.NET files as well.
Even after restarting the IIS, My PC, etc. it didn’t help a thing. After reading a hint on the internet that “clear all breakpoints”, I tried it and it indeed solves the problem :) However I’m quite sure that this started happening when I installed VS2005…
Nathan
Jun 19, 2006 at 7:06 pm
I am using Visual Studio 2005 Pro, I am currently writing an application with compact framework and visual basic. My performance is terrible! My Solution contains 4 projects (for deployment mainly) and contains around 20,000-25,000 lines of code in around 15-20 files.
It can take up to
· 10 minutes to open my solution
· 3-5 minutes to save (I press ctrl+s a lot, can you imagine how frustrating that is!)
· 5 minutes to deploy
· when the ide hits a breakpoint at the moment it is currently taking 6 minutes before I can do anything, vs just locks up and the hard drive is going nuts
I’m, really stressing out and struggling, I have deadlines to meet and I haven’t been able to meet them, because this product is just so slow, I have searched for hours on the net looking for a solution to the problem, and so far nothing has worked.
My system is this
Windows XP
Intel Centrino 1.6 (2mb cache)
1.5GB ddr ram
40gb 4200rpm harddrive
Nathan
Martin
Jun 23, 2006 at 5:08 am
We are having many of the problems described in the various posting.
When will the next service pack be available?
Thanks.
Mark
Jun 24, 2006 at 8:24 am
Yes, where is that SP? Q3 is here and we’re waiting (frustrated and impatient).
I’m working on a database app with the compact framework, SQL CE and Pocket PC 2003. The project, only a couple 1000 lines of code, takes 5 min to load into the IDE.
Time to build and deploy are reasonable (although not as speedy as I expected).
After a debug run, particularly using the PPC emulator, it takes over a minute of disk grinding to show the form design screen again. During this time you sit and wait, trying not to punch something. At least once a day the design screen never shows up, or maybe its black-screen cousin is all you get, followed by a restart and another 5 minute wait.
I appreciate your efforts Cameron. Are your conterparts simply disinterested? Maybe you got the short straw. This is not a language problem (I use C#), this is the no-way-RAD environment.
XP Pro, Dell Dimension 8300, 1G RAM. VS2005 Pro.
Christopher Ford
Jun 27, 2006 at 5:16 pm
I love VS 2005…haven’t had any problems. I develop on Win2k3 and win2k3 R2…loads fine, runs faster than .Net 2003 on my box, Intellisense is a dream to work with…I don’t have any problems.
Course, I read all the changes, made sure my code was compatible and changed the code that wasn’t. Builds fine, runs great, and faster than .Net 2003 ran it.
So…no complaints here.
James Wilson
Jul 3, 2006 at 10:29 pm
@Christopher: Lucky you, I call BS. How big is your project? I have a 3Ghz machine, 2GB memory, SCSI disk. VS2005 crawls on a medium sized project (1,000 files or so)…Compiling, launching, loading solution.
VS2003, by contrast is virtually instantaneous in everything it does for similarly sized projects.
awk
Jul 10, 2006 at 7:15 am
IDE itself seems to run fine for me. But it the thing suddenly started to produce ubelievebly slow unmanaged c++ code - someting like 50 times slower than compiled in my other system which has vs2003. I’ve checked all the project options without luck. phew..
Christopher Ford
Jul 10, 2006 at 10:43 am
@James: You’re right, I did a test over the weekend. I don’t usually have projects with that many files, but I did do some tests on some of my larger projects with VS 2005 and VS 2003. and VS 2003 is faster.
That being said, even though it is slower, I still prefer VS 2005 over VS 2003.
Andy
Jul 11, 2006 at 6:47 am
“First off, I’m really sorry that your experience with the product has been anything less than amazing.”
Please don’t try to spin this - “amazing” rarely defines any MS product, “barely adequate” is closer. In VS2005’s case, “garbage” is the word you’re looking for.
In short, two problems:
1. Unacceptable IDE performance: opening the solution takes forever, builds take forever, debugging takes forever and the IDE regularly freezes, refusing all mouse / keyboard interaction for several minutes. This is not a language specific problem - It happens in all pages C#, Script, aspx & VB.
2. Script breakpoints are usually ignored during debugging.
Let’s see that service pack ASAP
Mark Bussey
Jul 20, 2006 at 2:39 pm
I am also dissapointed with VS2005. I have been using VS2003 for apps for the PC, Web, and compact framework. Now, when I use the IDE and debugger to deploy an application on a mobile device with WinCE 5, it changes the names of assemblies, and creates folders with all lower case letters. What the!
Mark
Boris
Jul 22, 2006 at 10:40 am
I am having continuous problems with Vs 2005. Every time I try top open a file or directory by browsing the FS, Studio locks up. Eventually it comes back, but its annoying, any ideas?
Charly PK
Aug 7, 2006 at 9:34 am
I am creating a new project in C#. It worked perfectly for the last 3 or 4 days. I changed something in my code, probably in the VS-designed part (were I am not supposed to touch). I am not sure about this change since I did many other changes as well. But the point is that now, the VS IDE closes abrubtely when I open the project, after I do a few things. For example, I open it, I modify one line, I save it and the IDE is gone, voila, everything dissapeared. I rbooted my machine and it’s the same thing. I can do 2 or 3 operations and the IDE exits unexpectedly. My thoughs are: I could have done the worst possible thing with my code (which I don’t believe since I have been coding in C for 17 years and I know I am always very cautelous with what I do), but even aftewr doing the worst coding mistake, the IDE should just report the problem and thats all. What is the IDE for otherwise?. Now, I have no idea how to proceed with this. Reinstall VS 2005?. Go back to a previous version of my code which I know it worked OK (which is what I will do I guess). But what about trusting this IDE, with the thoughs in my mind that at any moment, you can lose everything you typed in since your last save just because the IDE didn’t like something you wrote?. I am surprised about this!.
Cameron McColl
Aug 7, 2006 at 11:01 am
Hi Charly,
You’re absolutely right, the IDE should never just disappear from underneath you. Clearly your project’s current state is exposing a bug which may or may not have been fixed.
To find out what the problem is we will need to collect a minidump at the point where the IDE is crashing. If you contact me at vbperf@microsoft.com we can provide you with a simple tool that can collect the minidump for you and you can then send this back to us for analysis.
We can then send the issue over to the right person on the C# team to find out what they can do to fix the problem or at least work around it.
Thanks.
Cameron McColl
Visual Basic.
Cameron McColl
Aug 7, 2006 at 11:22 am
Hi Charly,
Looks like my first (more detailed) reply got lost for some reason so I’m trying again.
If you contact us at vbperf@microsoft.com we can help you track this down. You have done nothing wrong. The IDE should never just die on you.
We have a simple tool that can help us figure out the problem and we’ll get you in touch with the right folks to get it solved.
Thanks
Cameron McColl
Visual Basic
Cameron McColl
Aug 7, 2006 at 11:57 am
I’m sending this on behalf of my Program Manager:
We’ve received feedback, both directly from developers and in the forums, regarding slow performance of the Visual Basic 2005 IDE in certain situations (larger projects, projects with many errors, etc.).
I’m sorry that these issues made it to production and degraded the performance of the IDE. The Visual Basic Performance team is working hard to address these issues via hotfixes and the upcoming Visual Basic 2005 SP1 while we work on engineering changes to make sure that issues such as these never make it into a shipping product in the future.
Based on this feedback and forum posts, we’ve been working with customers to address these performance issues. We recently released a performance hotfix to address the following areas of Visual Basic 2005 performance:
1. Improves the performance of single-stepping (F10) debugging.
2. Improves the performance of Task/Error List Refresh.
3. Improves the performance of Intellisense.
You can learn more about this hotfix in the KB 920805 article (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920805/en-us). In order to get this hotfix, you need to contact support and reference KB 920805. Details on contacting support can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=support.
Note that this hotfix rolls up all peformance hotfixes to date, so installing this hotfix will give you the best IDE performance.
Again, we appreciate your feedback and we thank you for your patience while we address these issues. Please contact vbperf@microsoft.com if you continue to see issues after applying this hotfix.
Thanks,
Chris Mayo
Visual Basic Performance Program Manager
Jim
Aug 7, 2006 at 12:24 pm
I am trying to debug an OnRowDataBounds method and if i start with out debugging i get a different value selected in a dropdown then i get when i try to debug and step into it. WHY would i get a different value when i try and step into rather then just continue or start without debugging? I believe this is bug with VS 2005 C# Debugger.
Cameron McColl
Aug 7, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Hi Jim,
Please use the Microsoft Conect site to submit feedback directly to the C# team who will contact you and resolve this issue:
http://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/default.aspx?SiteID=210
Chris B
Aug 10, 2006 at 3:59 pm
This ide is the most unstable thing I have ever seen. Simply copying and pasting text often causes the whole thing to crashes. The compiler crashes about 15 times a day whilst just sitting in the background ideling. Often it will get stuck in a loop crashing and reloading the project.
I also love how if you get a bit of html around an object that vs 2005 doesn’t like then the compiling thinks the object doesn’t exist.
DOTNETTER
Aug 11, 2006 at 11:53 am
I love VS 2005. I’ve built HUGE projects with it. If you don’t like it, you can always go back to PHP!!!!!!!! haha good luck with that. It’s all about knowing your tools.
Raven Caelladore
Aug 16, 2006 at 8:41 am
I’ve barely started using Visual Studio 2005 - my college provided the CD.
It would not be terrible, weren’t it for the fact it won’t compile anything (C++). Or rather, it does compile; and the same code that had a successful build in the morning won’t be built successfully in the afternoon.
That, when it doesn’t find the includes, the ones that actually *came* with VS2005 - such as winsock.h, pdh.h (from the platform SDK, I copied it under the VC\include folder, the lib in its correct folder, etc.), hell, sometimes even windows.h will not be found. Undefined symbols, couldn’t find the include… the errors are endless.
Thanh Diep
Aug 17, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Breakpoint does not work?
I have a problem with regards to setting breakpoint in ASP.NET web application. I have tried to Googled the problem but none of the answer solve the issue. Can anyone help me out?
Thanks,
Thanh
Problem Description:
==================
Set a breakpoint in a code behind statement of an ASP.NET page (C#), under a website project.
Run the program in IIS (http://localhost//Default.aspx) under debug mode. The execution does NOT stop at the breakpoint.
However when the program is run in Cassini under debug mode, the execution DOES stop at the breakpoint.
Attempted Solutions:
====================
So far I have tried the following without success:
- The program is run under debug mode
- In web.config file there is the statement:
- “network service” user is added to the “Debugger users” group
- Re-register the assembly diasymreader.dll
How to create the problem:
==========================
Create a test website, say TestDebug.
Add a label and a textbox to the default page.
Modified the Page_Load method of the default code behind file as follow:
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Label1.Text = “Test”;
TextBox1.Text = “Name”;
}
Set a breakpoint at the second statement.
Create a virtual directory under IIS to point to the test site TestDebug.
Highlight the TestDebug virtual directory and select “permission”
Add IUSR_ (Internet Guest Account) and “Network Service” to the permission.
Platform:
==================
- Windows server 2003
- Visual Studio 2005, Team Edition for Software Developers, Jan 2006 release
- ASP.NET 2.0 with C#
- IIS 6.0
Problem Background:
===================
We have successfully developed many sites using ASP.NET 1.x without any problems. During the last three months we converted one of our sites to ASP.NET 2.0 and run without any problems (i.e. we could set breakpoints etc). Last week one of our machine had a hardware failure. A new computer was configured and during the testing of this new machine we noticed this problem. We start to test other developers’ machines, they all have the same issue.
I am not sure what is happening here but I suspect there is some software updates (like security software) that cause this. All security software updates are pushed to our machines hence we have no idea when an update occurs.
Naveen Kada
Sep 13, 2006 at 8:06 am
We are facing OutOfMemoryException very frequently in our projects. The solution is fairly large(around 3000 files) and contanins multiple web projects. We extensively used datasets in our solution. Is there any known issues related to this problem?
Jason Seeley
Sep 26, 2006 at 1:05 pm
I haven’t had the OutOfMemoryException myself, but several friends of mine have had it.. I suggested to them that they start using the ‘using’ clause or ‘finally’, or even just manually disposing their data objects and connections. Once they started disposing properly, they stopped getting the OutOfMemoryException problems. On the one hand, I think it’s great that garbage collection exists - but there is definitely a bug with GC with relation to database connections. Make sure you always dispose limited resources (such as database connections).
Richard Hein
Sep 27, 2006 at 11:50 pm
Hi Thanh Diep,
The problem you have with debugging and wanting to break at a certain point that isn’t being hit is because you are not debugging the correct part of the application.
When you have ASP.NET run in IIS, you have to attach to the process that hosts ASP.NET (dllhost or inetinfo, depending on the isolation mode you select in the web site configuration). Otherwise, what you are actually debugging is only the CLIENT-SIDE script, but the breakpoints you set have to be set from the RUNNING SCRIPTS window (under the debug-windows menu).
If you look at the running scripts, you should see IExplore as a process (if that’s the client), and if you attach to dllhost or whatever, you should see it there at the top of another hierarchy. Then you can set client and server-side breakpoints wherever you want.
Note that if you try to debug dllhost or inetinfo without either having admin rights, or setting up least-priviledge debugging (which is a HUGE pain - and I consider that a bug), you will get an “access denied” or similar message.
Debugging on the built-in development server (Cassini) works because it is a different process completely.
The performance DOES suck. I have a huge migration project to work on and it’s error after error making it particularly useless for this, unless I am on my 3GHz AMD-64 bit with 1.5 GB RAM, otherwise, it’s practically unbearable.
Other comments concerning performance after you install VS2005 - try disabling the .NET Runtime Optimization Service in Services. This service runs when .NET assemblies are first installed, compiling them for the processor of your machine, generating native images. Disabling this service means that things will only be JIT compiled the first time you access a method of an assembly.
Once the optimization service has run, then in theory other calls to the .NET assemblies in the GAC etc… with start up faster because it’s already compiled to native code. If you stop the optimization service, it should stop any post-installation performance problems that you experience when the IDE isn’t open (but they are still there when it is, sadly), with little impact on you if you just let it JIT compile as it does for .NET 1.0 - 1.1.
Richard Hein
Sep 27, 2006 at 11:55 pm
Jason Seeley:
“On the one hand, I think it’s great that garbage collection exists - but there is definitely a bug with GC with relation to database connections. Make sure you always dispose limited resources (such as database connections).”
Database connections, and anything that isn’t managed by the CLR MUST be disposed of properly - it’s not a bug. The GC can’t collect unmanaged resources, and db connections are the #1 unmanaged resource in use that you’ll find. This is .NET 101 - your team needs to read “Applied .NET Framework Programming”.
Richard Hein
Sep 28, 2006 at 12:01 am
Debugging dllhost will cause instability in your system sometimes, therefore if you are debugging IIS web applications that are hosted in dllhost, you should kill dllhost (usually the one running under IUSR_machineName). This fixes a multitude of debugging problems. There is a warning dialog when you attach to DLLHOST that this can happen.
Richard Hein
Sep 28, 2006 at 12:01 am
Kill dllhost after a few debug-run cycles, I mean.
Richard Hein
Sep 28, 2006 at 12:11 am
File system navigation in Explorer problems:
Try setting Explorer’s advanced properties to launch each explorer instance as a separate process. I found that this helped, and I assume it’s because IE and Explorer share resources otherwise. For good measure, in IE’s settings, uncheck “reuse windows for launching shortcuts”.
Make sure script debugging is not disabled in IE when trying to debug.
Make sure that IExplore process is killed and not reused after debugging, if it’s reused then you will get problems with memory, debugging and crashes.
Richard Hein
Sep 28, 2006 at 12:16 am
Jim Says:
August 7th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
“I am trying to debug an OnRowDataBounds method and if i start with out debugging i get a different value selected in a dropdown then i get when i try to debug and step into it. WHY would i get a different value when i try and step into rather then just continue or start without debugging? I believe this is bug with VS 2005 C# Debugger”
This is because the debugger is evaluating something - an expression or property. When you do something like put the mouse cursor over a variable during debugging, or if you put a property or method in a watch, it will evaluate it. So, if you inspect a value of a property that does something like increment a value or whatever in a loop somewhere in the chain, you will have side-effects that will change the values.
These are Heisenbugs as inspecting the code changes it: http://foldoc.org/?heisenbug
Richard Hein
Sep 28, 2006 at 12:22 am
Jim: you can use an attribute [DebuggerStepThrough] or others that may be better for your situation to get around stuff like that. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.aspx
.NET Oldenburg Blog » Visual Studio, .NET und Windows Vista
Sep 28, 2006 at 9:20 am
[…] Insofern scheint es derzeit für die Entwickler die beste Möglichkeit zu sein, auf Windows XP zu bleiben und dort weiterzuentwickeln. Bei VS 2005 bleibt zu hoffen, dass die bisherigen Instabilitäten (siehe z.B. hier) bald ausgemerzt sind, damit man auf Vista auch für Vista entwickeln kann. […]
Damien Jorgensen
Oct 3, 2006 at 3:14 pm
I’ve been using VS 2005 since launch and I havent experienced any of the problems listed above!
Its miles better and more stable than VS 2003! Maybe its time you lot upgraded your PC!
colbert
Oct 6, 2006 at 11:21 am
I think RAM and CPU speeds do matter also here. Better get a hardware upgrade and do some spyware scans.
Betty
Oct 10, 2006 at 4:30 am
Hello,
Just installed visual web developer express edition. Installed okay but when i try to run any script i receive the message, “Access Denied”. File not found or access denied. I am running windows xp professional version 2002 service pack 2 . Asp.net configuration page displays the same message. Please can you help.
Thanh Diep
Oct 11, 2006 at 9:36 am
Hi Richard Hein,
Thanks for the reply. I managed to solve the problem and post the solution on the asp.net forum http://forums.asp.net/thread/1381062.aspx
Regards,
Thanh
dave lowe
Oct 16, 2006 at 5:31 am
oh my god!!!
what is this rubbish? after installing visual studio 2005 my pc has become unusable - how on earth did this disgraceful app get released? i have tried to create various apps (web apps, web services, etc) and the compiler is SOOOOO slow it cuts down productivity to virtually zero. is there gonna be a service pack to fix this rubbish cos until there is im going back to vb6 (i know, it must be bad if i’m choosing to use vb6)!!!!
Sarika ( vbperf team)
Oct 16, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Dave,
I’m sorry that you’re having these compiler issues and that it’s affecting your work.
We have released a performace QFE to resolve compiler issues.
This is a known issue that we’ve resolved in a hotfix. Do you have the fix installed?
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917452/).
If you don’t have that fix installed, we’ve released a hotfix that rolls up all the performance improvements we’ve made to date, including this compiler stability issue. You can get details on that hotfix and how to get it by contacting support at the following URL:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;920805
If you haven’t installed that hotfix, please contact support and get that fix. There is no charge for the support incident since this is a known issue.
Please respond at vbperf@microsoft.com and we’ll get you back up and running ASAP.
Thanks,
Sarika Calla
Visual Basic Performance Team
Even Steven
Nov 8, 2006 at 6:06 pm
We’re using VS 2005 and TFS for source control in a Windows Forms solution counting 16 projects. It’s a nightmare! The IDE simply is so full of bugs that it’s useless. Every other time we try to open a form in design view it can’t load. Close the project and open it…and wait for a minute for it to open…and the form will open. For it to report an error the next time. Add hundreds of other bugs and you have a terrible product.
How this can be put on the marked without a fix now for a whole year is beyond me. It does not work! If Microsoft needs to know what doesn’t work this clearly shows that they never use their own product! I’m 100% sure they would get a lot of bugs in any kind of project of a certain size. It doesn’t even need to be very big.
It’s quite clear that VS 2005 is too big a project for MS. They are trying to put too much into it and the codebase probably is so complex that no one at MS really know what’s going on.
Rob Henry
Nov 12, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Visual Studio is one of the worst offending software products Microsoft produces. It is the most unpredictable software product ever!
Case in point: I went to change a setting using the Tools…Option menu. As I moved through the Help tab it started performing a VERY long execution sequence updating the help. I could not do anything else within the dialog box and my system was hosed for ten minutes.
Whoever thought to allow a long running execution sequence in a setting dialog box, and also without the user selecting to do so, should be immediately fired from Microsoft; and their boss, too! What kind of dipstick does it take to do such a thing??!!! Only a complete moron would say, “Hey boss, I got an idea, while the user is selecting their setting in a modal dialog box let’s launch into a long running execution of updating their help files! That would be helpful, huh?” And only a bigger moron would agree to let them do that!
FIRE THE IDIOTS!!!
Oh, let’s not get into the CACHING of web site binaries! [deleted], who in their right mind would allow the caching of DLLs that are part of a solution such that when debugging it turns out that the executing DLL is NOT the DLL represented by the code within the solution??!! Somehow the DLL is stale and was not rebuilt even though the code in the DLL did change! Man, Microsoft hires some STUPID people!
Bill Gates has worried that a kid in his basement might produce a product that could easily compete with Microsoft. Guess what? By producing such LOUSY software, Microsoft has lowered the barrier to entry on that idea. Any idiot can produce a better development environment without all the BS and bugs that Microsoft has seen necessary to introduce into Visual Studio. Way too many people at Microsoft have too much time on their hands and just feel the need to add crap into the products.
I am finding that with all the time wasted searching MSDN help and online web sites to learn how to use Microsoft products and the wasted time getting around bugs or having to sit around while Microsoft’s buggy software does what it wants to and not what I need it to, I could code in Assembly language and get the job done faster and with far better results. At least the environment is predictable, repeatable, and reliable. Not something anyone can say about Visual Studio 2005.
Chris Mayo, Microsoft
Nov 13, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Even Steven:
I would appreciate it if you would contact me at vbperf@microsoft.com so I can get in touch with the VSTS team to address your issue.
Thanks,
Chris Mayo
Visual Basic Program Manager
Chris Mayo, Microsoft
Nov 13, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Rob Henry:
I’m sorry you’re having performance issues. I’m a PM on the Visual Basic team that is responsible for the performance of the VB product.
Would you be willing to work with my team to help reproduce the issue you are seeing with the help file being updated and it’s impact on the performance of the IDE? If so, please contact me at vbperf@microsoft.com.
I understand your frustration with this performance issue. Performance issues that impact day to day work reflect badly on us and our product. In some instances, we didn’t see issues in our testing that developers are seeing in your development environment. We’re working hard to more closely replicate customer development environments in our automated and manual testing.
We’d like to work with you to identify the problem your are experiencing and address it from both a servicing perpsective and an engineering perspective.
With regard to your issue with DLL caching, I’ll forward your comments on to the ASP.NET team to reply.
Thanks,
Chris Mayo
Visual Basic Performance Program Manager
Steve
Nov 14, 2006 at 4:37 pm
my only problem with Visual Studio 2005 is how slow it is to load projects.
The same projects take 5 seconds to load in SharpDevelop but just browsing to open a project in Visual studio can take 2 min, and then 2 min to open . I am not sure why but if the project is on the visual studio start page it only take 10 sec to load. so it must have to do with creating stuff for the start page.
Sarika ( vbperf team)
Nov 20, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Steve,
We would like to track this problem down with your help. Please contact us at vbperf@microsoft.com and help us identify the problem more clearly by providing some more data on machine configuration and the solution structure.
From your initial desciption it seems that loading project from File Open dialog is slow at 2 places:
1. Browsing to find the .sln/.vbproj file.
2. Loading the project/solution.
Thanks,
Sarika
VB Perf Team.
Jason
Nov 28, 2006 at 4:57 pm
What about the loss shortcuts?
There is no longer a re-build short cut and it isn’t even in the menu. You now have to right click the project to re-build.
The short cuts for opening and closing region blocks?
I used to use ctrl+o but now that’s open file. I didn’t use the region short cuts too much but if I forgot at least I could right click on the left side of the enviroment, but not anymore.
What about the new implementation of a tab control so that new tabs are opened on the left? Just WHY would anyone do that?
ALL IN ALL EVERYTHING IS FRIGGEN SLOW! Slow to debug, slow to open files and slow to switch from source to design view. I’m in a position where I must use VS-2005 and honestly the I am now considering quiting my job FOR NO OTHER REASON.
My day is now broken-up with hundreds of small breaks as I wait for visual studio to catch up. These distractions break my concentration and lead to a lack productivity. As McConnell says in “Code Complete” people are happiest when their are getting things done. Visual Studio is no longer the tool-set to get things done.
Please also be sure that I hate linux and I sing the praises of Bill, Microsoft and Capitalism every chance I get. This being the FIRST exception.
Mark Baker
Nov 29, 2006 at 7:45 am
Along with all the other people posting on this website I am writing as another disgruntled VS 2005 user. My team of developers here have been using VS 2005 day in day out since its release a year ago and we’ve been struggling ever since. Our development laptops despite having more than adequate specs are struggling performance wise and we’ve even had to reinstall all software on the latops a couple of times within a year because they just get slower and slower and slower and a reinstall seems the only cure. VS is regularly crashing in the region of 4 or 5 times a day and we regularly getting errors during compilation where the only realistic option is to end task VS to get back up and running again in the quickest time. We also suffer with slow project load times, slow compilation times and now all sorts of weird stuff is going on now that we’ve added a second web project to our solution e.g. intelisense has stopped working properly, when we compile we are getting Build Failed messages but no errors are listed, things are just generally a mess. One of the big selling points by MS was how much time developers would save with power and tools within VS 2005, but I can say categorically that we’ve wasted huge amounts of development time over the year trying to cope with using VS 2005. We’ve missed so many deadlines its ridiculous. Recent development tasks have hit an all time low with deadlines being missed because of development time taking twice as long as expected. And as for the latest reincarnation of SourceSafe, well thats just a joke - how can you take a product that has been around for years (VSS 6.0) and was considered rubbish and past its sell by date anyway and make it worse? Yes I know VSTS is out but we’re a small company and can’t afford the ridiculous cost for VSTS and to be honest I pity those that did pay for it looking back on comments made about it.
Anyway having read the above I notice there are hotfixes around that might address some of our issues. However using the links provided in this blog on the 16th October none of them seem to work any longer. Is this a temporary thing? Are they available anywhere else? Is there an SP in the offing. I keep seeing old forum posts talking about a SP due out in the early half of 2006, but I haven’t seen one and its now the very late half of 2006. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Mark
bootstrap
Nov 30, 2006 at 5:56 am
BTW, the offers of help from vbperf@microsoft.com
are a fraudulant attempt to PRETEND they care and
PRETEND they are helping people “on the side”.
I hereby report that my three requests to their
offers of help have not been answered. As you
can see above in this thread, I have been trying
to get help since about May 8th, and three tries
to get help from those vbpervs has got me zero
reply in 7 months (last attempt ~ 2 weeks ago).
Just thought everyone here should know that they
appear to be just playing nice HERE for good PR.
Maybe somebody else has had better luck. Dunno.
Yuriy
Nov 30, 2006 at 6:39 am
Charly PK Says:
“But the point is that now, the VS IDE closes abrubtely when I open the project, after I do a few things. For example, I open it, I modify one line, I save it and the IDE is gone, voila, everything dissapeared.”
Andy Says:
“Please don’t try to spin this - “amazing” rarely defines any MS product, “barely adequate” is closer. In VS2005’s case, “garbage” is the word you’re looking for.”
So, maybe VS disappears when garbage collector runs…
Chris Mayo
Nov 30, 2006 at 12:46 pm
bootstrap,
I’m sorry that you’ve had such a hard time contacting me and my team. I can assure you that vbperf@microsoft.com is monitored daily and we all check our Junk Mail folders on the off chance that a performance related email is filtered out as SPAM for some reason. We’ve used the performance investigations and feedback from this alias to create two hotfixes related to perf and fixed a number of bugs for SP1.
Resolving your issues and servicing VB2005 to improve performance couldn’t be more important to us.
I’d appreciate it if you would try again using the vbperf@microsoft.com alias. Please don’t include any attachements or jpegs, etc. in your mail. I’m in the office today and tomorrow and will check the alias over the weekend. If you don’t get a reply in 24 hours, please submit a Microsoft Connect bug, which is also monitored daily. Details at https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio. Please make sure you select “VB” for the language and it will go directly to my team.
Thanks,
Chris Mayo
Visual Basic Performance Program Manager
Jason J
Dec 4, 2006 at 11:54 am
I bought VS2005 for C# development in early 2006 and installed it on a 2.0GHz Pentium notebook. I was somewhat taken aback at how long it took for the IDE to open, how slowly it responded to basic clicks within the editor (like tab changes), how slowly it performed builds.
I can expect building a project to take a little while, depending on the size of the project. What doesn’t make sense is waiting five seconds to change to a new tab.
When I bought a new notebook PC with a Dual Core processor, VS2005 started behaving itself.
It’s a shame that I had to employ the brute force approach, and apparently that “buy a better computer” approach doesn’t work for everyone, anyway. But it worked for me.
As slow as VS2005 is, the good news is that the final product runs quickly, regardless of the processor.
Jason
Dec 4, 2006 at 2:22 pm
When controls we on a web-form you used to be able to draw a square around those controls and move them as a group. Now you must select ever control individually. Now it more resembles old crystal reports.
Removing that functionality was great idea thank you so much 2.0 Dev team.
Brian Hutchison
Dec 8, 2006 at 11:06 am
You can no longer drag menu items or tool strip items from one menu / tool strip onto another one. You must cut and paste them - immediately losing any event callback connections you had in place. Lovely.
At work I have a dual Pentium Xeon 2.66 with 2.5Gb - and it takes 30+ seconds to switch between design and code view or code and design view - up to minute round trip for adding a callback.
Every so often VS2005 decides to update Intellisense - another 30 second wait. Then the auto recovery information - another 30 seconds.
Opening the on-line help is another 30+ seconds. It is quicker to do a web search.
The doubly annoying thing is that it locks the entire system - you cant even make use of the other processor.
At home I have a Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66 with 2Gb - ALL of the above timing problems go away. Sorry - but Intel just aint that good at improving processor performance. Something just isn’t right.
It also isn’t my machine - other developers in my team using more recent machines than mine have exactly the same problems.
The above problems occur in all language modes - we’ve tested.
VS2003 had its problems but VS2005 is getting way beyond a joke for us.
Brian H
David
Dec 22, 2006 at 2:01 pm
I am extremely disappointed. The performance is terrible. I would not reccomend this product to my worst enemy…well maybe to them :)
Sometimes it locks up walking through code, sometimes it just locks up and I am beginning to hate typing anything that makes the intellisence pop up because that is a 10-20 second delay.
Everything and I do mean everything I do in the IDE is slower than 2002 or 2003. EVERYTHING!
Also my VB.NET 2005 apps run slower than they did when compiled under 2002/2003.
What really worries me is that the product has been out a full year now.
Mark N
Dec 22, 2006 at 2:38 pm
I’ve previously published my frustration with VS2005 on this blog, so I am no particular fan of the product.
I recently lost a hard drive and did the whole reinstall of the OS routine. I have found that 80% of my problems with VS2005 are now gone. My only conclusion is that the upgrade from VS2003 contributes to the mess that most of us have experienced.
Jay M
Dec 28, 2006 at 4:28 pm
I have been using VS2005 daily (just updated with SP1 last week) for over 2 months now. While I feel it is a major upgrade to VS2003, one area that I think was a major step back is the un-intuitive behavior of opening new tabs to the left of existing tabs.
I just cannot get used to it as it runs counter to the default tab behavior of most applications including Firefox, IE7, the old VS2003 and the one before that.
I have searched the web for a fix to this and I have seen many people complaining about it (the default tab behavior). Perhaps Microsoft would listen just like they did before when they released the WAP project type even before including it in SP1. One solution would be to make this behavior updateable/configurable via Tools > Options.
Doug
Jan 9, 2007 at 1:41 pm
VS 2005 is an appalling piece of software. It wont compile any of my VS 2003 applications. Its coming up with errors Ive never heard of before. To make matters worse it seems to corrupt my previous 2003 apps so that I cant even get to them to work on 2003.
The HELP system doesnt work either. I installed MSDN 8.0 fine but the HELP system cant seem to find it.
I paid about £200-£300 for VS 2005. With all the wasted time Ive spent on it Id gladly have paid twice that amount never to have heard of VS 2005.
Is it possible to get a refund on this software. It really annoys me that Ive paid good money for this product.
Brian Hutchison
Jan 15, 2007 at 6:57 am
Well, so much for Service Pack 1.
I was so hopeful, there were at least 2 bugs listed in the release notes that related to the delays experienced switching between design and code view.
So, a 450Mb download plus over an hour installing and what is the result:
- switching between design and code view (C++/CLI) may be a bit fast - but still way too long 10 to 15 seconds.
- switching between code and design view is about 3 time LONGER than before! Waiting for almost 2 minutes before I can start touching my dialog designs is totally unacceptable.
I have not had time yet to test if any of my other problems have been resolved - this was the one that was hurting us most.
By the way, a colleague recently got a brand new Dell Core 2 Duo E6700 machine with 2Gb RAM and he has exactly the same problem - this is on a totally uncluttered machine XP Pro + VS2005 and not a lot else. We’ve tried turning off the virus checker, disconnecting the network - nothing works.
I had hopes the the new machine would help, since my home machine dos not exhibit this behaviour, I could then make a case for a new development machine - but how can I? I cannot give any sort of guarantee that it will help in any way!
I AM NOT A HAPPY BUNNY!
Brian Hutchison
Jan 15, 2007 at 9:32 am
After a considerable amount of faffing about I have isolated one of the causes for the huge delay when switching views.
When built in debug mode our project generates about 200 pdb files totalling about 400mb.
For some reason Visual studio 2005 looks at these files (and a few copies of them it holds in “ProjectAssemblies”) whilst switching between code view and design view.
Our over-zealous IT department have our Virus checker set to check every file that is even thought about in the same room.
We are having words with our IT department … I’ll let you know how we get on.
Brian Hutchison
Jan 15, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Another grand theory bites the dust.
It is *not* the virus checker + VS2005 that causes the slow code/design view switch problem.
I convinced our IT department to turn it off on my machine whilst I ran some tests. Absolutely no difference - in fact it was quicker on occasions with the virus checker running.
The only work around we have is to clean the solution before any serious GUI development work. Fortunately we can get away with that to an extent as around 90% of our code base is built outside the VS2005 IDE which only builds the GUI itself and a small interface layer.
I am convinced it is related to the issue of multiple copies of PDB, DLL & EXE files being placed in ProjectAssemblies (to the tune of 5Gb) but have no solution to that either.
sad and lonely
Jan 22, 2007 at 3:01 am
Total problems on my end. Debugger doesn’t work! It reports bad data values. This product is worse than broken. Intellisense locks everything up, can’t work on our projects. I’m about to throw my computer out the window.
Sonofa…
Cutie
Jan 22, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Another disgruntled developer…
I must say, I just don’t get it. I am developing a web app. And from time to time, when i debug my javascript files, i keep getting the old files, even after i clean the solution. It seem the debugger kept a copy of the file and using it over and over again, even if i have changed it.
This is really frustrating, especially since i am quite new to javascript and have to fix my error so often.
Do you guys encounter the same prob? and any solution?
Jason
Jan 23, 2007 at 11:47 am
Hey Cutie,
I’ve encountered the same problem when deploying changes when I’ve only made changes to my javascript file. I’m only guessing but what I think may be happening is that the js files are getting cached in memory and the website doesn’t see the change. So the only way to affect the change is to start and stop the website via IIS.
Something most developers fail to realize is that javascript supports try catch statements. I find those really helpful when trying to debug problems.
Good luck
Cutie
Jan 25, 2007 at 4:11 am
Hie jason,
thanks for your help. but restarting the website doesn’t help…
however, someone from another website advised me to clear my temporary internet file from IE. n it does solve my problem.
post it here to share with you all..
thanks alot anyway…
Shane
Feb 1, 2007 at 4:57 pm
I’ve had the same problems as Cutie and Jason, if you’re running IE6 the Developer Toolbar has an option to disable the cache and clear the cache, very useful. Unfortunately I have not found a DevToolbar which works with IE7. :(
Shane
Shane
Feb 1, 2007 at 6:08 pm
I hate to reply to my reply, but I just found that MS has released beta 3 of IE Devtoolbar.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en
And it’s working under IE7 & Vista. Vista users tip: log out and back in for the tool bar to work.
Shane
Chris
Feb 7, 2007 at 9:42 pm
At least I’m not alone.
The performance of VS2005 is appalling. We have a large WinForms C# project and it’s just about impossible to work on it.
The turn around from the designer to code and back again is measured in minutes.
Compile to execution in debug mode is 30+ seconds.
The first call to a web services takes 30+ seconds. The disk and cpu are idle. It just waits.
Everything is slow. I changed the configuration from Debug to Release mode and it used 100% cpu for a minute or more.
Not a happy camper.
DJ Park
Feb 8, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Chris -
I’m sorry to hear that you’re having so many performance issues with your project. If you contact me at vcsperf@microsoft.com, we can work with you to track down the issues you’re seeing and hopefully provide some work-arounds that will help your situation.
Another approach you can take is to submit your issue to the C# team via the Microsoft Connect website. This will ensure that the issue is tracked appropriately.
Thanks,
DJ Park
Visual C#, Program Manager
Chris
Feb 11, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Thanks,
I spent the weekend rebuilding my PC and that seems to have fixed the major issue I have and that is the the time from pressing F5 till the application starts. I re-read my post and this time was actually 3 minutes with %100 cpu before the app finally started.
This is better now. The problem that I still have is that the first web service call takes too long.
Thanks
Chris
Christophe
Feb 13, 2007 at 7:10 am
Our company decided to stop developping in .NET. Development in .NET takes way too much time and MONEY. Most of the time we got stuck resolving ‘unexplainable’ errors and making ‘workarounds’. Simple applications that consume days instead of hours, well that isn’t worth trying anymore. There will be a big chance we don’t even buy or try future releases any more. We’ve had it! We’ve got a company to run and clients to keep happy and that’s hard to achieve while developping in the Microsoft .NET environment.
Brian Hutchison
Feb 14, 2007 at 8:57 am
Christophe, I envy you that choice.
The latest insanity in our catalogue of woe is that VS2005 has just eaten all my disk space (again) with its multitude of copies of the “ProjectAssemblies”.
Unfortunately this time there is insufficient space to shut down VS2005 and save any of my work. VS2005 has all the ProjectAssemblies locked so I cant delete them to make space to shut down VS2005 …
This is after a week of evaluating third party docking and toolbar control suites only to find that none of them work correctly with C++ - specifically using the “/cli” switch instead of “/cli:pure” - we have to use the “impure” version to permit access to the 95% of our code base which is legacy unmanaged C++.
Oh well, off I go to see which of my obviously worthless non-microsoft files on my hard disk I can delete.
James
Feb 16, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Visual Studio used to be on of the bright spots from Microsoft. I cut my teeth on Visual Studio 6; and even integrated several firmware compilers into it for my embedded work.
After a few hours dicking around with VS2005, installing two service packs and other nonsense, I can safely say Visual Studio 2005 is the worst Visual Studio release in history. I have multi-thousand line projects using attributed ATL classes that are impossible to compile using the new compiler. And these safe versions of the CRT. What a joke!
Apple should eat these guys lunches this year(2007). Fire Steve En-Ballmer before its too
late!
Bryce
Feb 26, 2007 at 7:31 pm
I’ve got problems with VS 2005 too that haven’t been discussed here…
I have it opened and I dragged a completely unrelated file into the window. It’s a vbs file that VS 2005 shouldn’t (and doesn’t) treat specially (no intellisense, no colorization, etc…). I use he mousewheel to scroll through the file and I find tha the devenv.exe process takes up all the CPU! I can see it at 0% until I start scrolling, wa