VS 2008 SP1 over Remote Desktop: Constant Repainting?

Question

The text editor in Visual Studio 2008 was very fast over Remote Desktop.

The text editor in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is very slow over Remote Desktop, causing way too much repainting (and resulting flickering). The slower your connection is, the worse the problem is, but it's aggravating enough even when RDPing into a machine on the same LAN.

The problem seems to be limited to Visual Studio. Doing the same editing actions in another editor (like Notepad and Notepad2) are quite fast with no full-editor repainting.

Anybody know what's causing it, and can anything be done about it?

The machine in question is running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. I've noticed it RDPing it from a variety of OSes, including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7.

Things I've tried that haven't made any difference:

• Changing the font to Arial Black
• Using a non-TrueType font
• Turning off change tracking
• Turning off addins (I'm running TD.NET, Refactor! Pro, and GhostDoc)
• Turning off Animate Tools (that was already off, but I thought I'd list it anyway)
• Turning off the Navigation Bar

Update: For the moment, the problem seems solved, because in VS2010 Beta 1, the painting issue over RDP is now gone.

Answer 1

Did you remember to:

1. Turn off the Navigation Bar
2. Turn off Track changes
3. Turn off Animate environment tools

Answer 2

Turn off any plugins. Change your font to Arial Black( I found Consolas to cause issues )

Answer 3

Does it happen in all file types or for example, just javascript files?

Answer 4

Try disabling Font Smoothing in your RDP options before you connect. Fixed it for me. It makes everything look rather grainy (changing the Environment font in VS to Arial 10pt helps there) but now no flicker at least. I'll take grainy with no flicker over that annoying flicker. It was going to give me seizures.

Answer 5

Make sure that the bandwidth settings in the Remote Desktop connection are appropriate for your connection to the remote PC. Turning off themes can make a big difference.

Answer 6

I'm not seeing this issue. However, Visual Studio 2008 does seem to keep all the Intellisense windows it has ever created, it just makes them invisible. They will show up momentarily when you log in with RDP though. Once they're all drawn, they'll disappear again -sigh-