Visual Studio 2008 freezing when editing aspx/master pages

Question

Visual Studio freezes up continually when I'm editing master pages or aspx files. Here's what I've tried that have not helped:

• restarting VS
• only working with few files open at a time
• Disabled all addins (resharper etc.)
• deleted .suo and .user files
• changed default editor from Web Form Editor and Master Page Editor to HTML Editor
• installed SP1

I don't have tons of files - 3 Master pages and maybe 30 aspx files. It is a asp.net mvc project. All I have to do to get VS to freeze is type a little text or even just paste. The freezing lasts a good 5-10 seconds. My machine has 4GB of RAM and fast disks.

Could it have anything to do with asp.net mvc? Would the amount and size of other projects in the solution affect the editor?

Answer 1

Have you installed SP1?

Answer 2

I'm not sure about that, but I guess that if you're having a lot of (probably huge) projects in the solution, this would definitely slow down VS for it parses the code to give you an up-to-date intellisence menu ... Master pages are a little slow anyway, especially that VS is not that fast on rendering the HTML elements, not to mention Master pages.

Answer 3

I had a similar issue and found an article about the problem, rather than reinstall Office to check, I simply renamed the setup.exe to setup.exe.old and that resolved it.

Answer 4

I have been having this problem off and on for a few weeks. I finally resolved it today. The source (nice pun) of the problem was source control. I am currently using Visual Source Safe 2005 (I know, I'm dumping it soon), but I think it could be an issue with any source control package.

I first suspected VSS when I was able to edit ASPX pages in the design view without issue using a machine that was not connected to VSS. If I removed source control from the project, everything worked fine.

I then discovered that somehow my VSS connection settings got changed from using a folder connection to a web connection. I'm not sure how this could have happened since I am the only one that uses VSS and I certainly didn't change it. Anyway, I reset it back and everything began to work normally again.

Answer 5

rename worked for me i.e. changed setup.exe to setiup.exe.old

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\ OFFICE12\Office Setup Controller\Setup.exe

wish i'd found this article first - it has taken me many man hours

thx -j

Answer 6

It can also happen if you have markup problems. For instance, if you have a Label control and add something like Text="<%# TranslateLabel("lblSearch") %>" the page will freeze even in source mode when attempting to save it. The correct sintax should be Text='<%# TranslateLabel("lblSearch") %>'. I know it is not your problem, but maybe it's useful for somebody else...

Answer 7

I got the sampe problem with Visual Studio 2008 SP1. And yeah it was a masterpage as well. The solution what I found is to restart Visual Studio 2008 and use the source mode of ASPX file :)

I guess the problem here is a masterpage.

Answer 8

I had the same problem when I removed Office 2007 to install Office 2010 beta. I have installed Office 2010 64 bits on Windows 7

I used Robert MacLean's solution, and it works for me, I just renamed the file.

Answer 9

I Solved this problem by uninstalling 'Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component' from my machine. It can be uninstalled from 'Add/Remove Programs' option in Control Panel. What a nightmare!

Now everything works just like its supposed to. I'm surprised Microsoft couldn't figure out what the problem and solution is. How much do they spend on R&D and Q/A again?????

Hope this helps others.

Answer 10

Hi all, Hate to bump and old post, but I just had to say thanks so much for this solution. I have battled with this not responding problem for months with VS2008 and VWD Express 2008. I've dug through countless posts until i found this thread.

The solution is so bizzare. I don't even use MS Office on this PC, but even if I did, I'd have never thought to think of looking there.

I was so sick of this problem that I was ready to give up on Visual Studio for web development.

Thanks again, JC

Answer 11

I finally figured out what the problem was with mine. I had a protocol relative script reference in my masterpage that was reeking havick on my editor. Hopefully a bug microsoft will fix soon.

Here is what I had: <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript">

What I had to do to fix it: <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript">

Hope that helps someone

Answer 12

I am not sure if this is going to help anybody but after trying all the answers here to no avail I deleted a huge block of commented code on my ASPX page and the behavior went away. I am not really sure why a large commented block of code would cause VS to freeze up after every edit action but that seems to be what happened.