VS2008: Projects now take forever to open

Question

Hello, yesterday afternoon Visual Studio 2008 suddenly started taking a really long time to open ASP.NET (Web Forms) projects, after several months with no problems.

This problem seemed to begin after I tried adding references to "CrystalDecisions.Enterprise.dll" and "CrystalDecisions.Enterprise.Framework.dll" to my main work project. However, every project now suffers from this lag--even ASP.NET test projects with only a default page and no other VS instances running, and my main project with those references removed.

I don't know if the CrystalDecisions thing is a coincidence or not, but that's when this started, and persisted even after removing the references and in new, empty projects.

By default I open VS with an empty environment (no Web start page) and this happens quickly--it's opening any project that now takes minutes to complete.

Something that may matter: this is on a network with no Internet access, so if VS is suddenly looking outside for something it wasn't before, even when opening an empty test project with no references, that could be a problem.

Stuff I tried:

1. Uninstalled/reinstalled VS2008 (and SP1)
2. Attached debugger from one VS instance to another loading test project and monitored native/managed code (per: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1710408/visual-studio-freezing-on-opening-project)
3. Ensured Tools|Options|Debugging|Symbols has no external references
4. Went through Tools|Options looking for any other external references (Environment|Startup is clear, for example)

This is on XP (so no: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/447346/vs-2008-open-web-site-takes-forever).

Does anybody have any advice on what else I can check? Unfortunately I have no admin rights on my machine so I can't install other monitoring tools like Sysinternals (or reinstall the OS, and a request for this might happen in weeks, or never).

I didn't really see anything when attaching the debugger while opening a test project. There was a reference to mswsock.dll; does that mean it's trying to call out for something or is it just preparing to run my project locally or some other normal operation?

EDIT: I also tried creating an empty Class Library (i.e., non-Web) project and it takes just as long to load.

What does VS do when loading a project that could change and slow things down to a crawl?

Answer 1

It sounds like you are timing out attempting to resolve (or connect to) an invalid hostname.

Check your hosts file (%windir%\system32\drivers\etc\) and make sure that localhost hasn't been defined as something other than 127.0.0.1 (or ::1 if you're on Windows 7).

Answer 2

I once had performance problems with Visual Studio on XP which turned out to be related to bad proxy settings. In my case, the symptom was a long (at least 10 seconds) delay each time after I stopped a debug session. I don't particularly remember projects taking a long time to load, but that might also have been the case.

Try clearing your proxy settings by running proxycfg -d on the command line. That's what fixed it for me.

Answer 3

Could it be something Source Control related? I installed AnkhSVN the other day and now my projects take a much longer time to load.

I might also suspect a virus scanner. Get cozy with a network admin and have him temporarily disable your virus scanner as a test.

Answer 4

It's the BusinessObjects Enterprise stuff that's knocking VS down to a slow crawl.

Their .NET SDK does this, and even before I installed that just referencing the relevant assemblies led to a start-up time of 7 minutes for my primary work project.

Their integration with the IDE makes every project--even simple ones with default settings--slow to open.

General Web and SAP forum searches haven't turned up much about this problem, which is confusing (and makes me think I'm doing something incorrectly; yet others on my team now have the same problem).

Has anybody else encountered this problem with BO Enterprise? Anybody using it and not seeing the same issues we are with VS integration?

At this point we don't think we can realistically develop with it. [I posted something over on their forums but haven't received any responses yet.]