views:

344

answers:

4

Hi,

I'm using VS2008, in a normal mid-size solution.

Sometimes, debug stepping becomes very slow. A padlock gets rendered on the every file tab for every "step" (F10/F11), and it can take up to two seconds for every step. That makes debugging very annoying and slow. Has anyone seen this problem?

+1  A: 
Igor Brejc
+2  A: 

Yes, Visual Studio is extremely slow at debugging at times. There are a number of additional steps (in addition to turning off the Enable property evaluation" setting) you can take to speed up the process. Essentially, it requires massive amounts of RAM, so performing a few things to free that up will help.

  1. Go into the preferences of Visual Studio. Look for all the options relating to animating menus and so forth. These have a tendency to be intensive at times, while not specific to debugging as you usually aren't opening up menus, it does seem to help.

  2. On the computer itself, if you right-click on my computer. Go to the advanced tab and under performance. If you adjust your computer for best performance it'll speed things up. It gets rid of any nice styles on your computer, but it'll free up some of the memory you are wanting.

  3. Close any unnecessary programs. The more memory you can give Visual Studio the better it is going to behave.

Brian
A: 

Here's a link to some guidance on Mike Stahl's MSDN blog, with respect to resolving debugger slowdowns

I ran across this because conditional breakpoints in my app's hotspot killed my debug performance. Personal BKM: resolve potential performance issues before you leave for the night, for you may not remember them in the morning.

Michael Petrotta
A: 

Hi All,

I've noticed in VS 2008 that if you have the 'Show Threads in Source' button selected in the debug toolbar that stepping can be at least 10 times slower.

I've also noticed that if your application takes a long time to start in debug mode that this can be resolved if you simply 'Delete All Breakpoints' under the Debug menu. This solved an annoying problem for me even though I only had a handful of breakpoints set at the time.

Silas