visual studio 2010 becomes slow after saving on Windows 7

Rust and oil inside "Niles machine tool" (HDR)

Ran into this annoying bugger of a problem with Visual Studio 2010 on Windows 7 where every time I saved a file (any file, no matter how large or small it was) the GUI started reacting extremely slow on me. Menu’s didn’t react, keystrokes didn’t appear, scrolling didn’t work. It acted like a whole bunch of stuff was going on, but nothing really was. After a few minutes or so responses where back to normal, until I saved a file again…

While it was happening CPU usage of devenv.exe was fine (very low). Cleaning the solution didn’t help either, which in some cases fixes odd VS behaviour. In short, I was at a loss. Googling for a solution didn’t really bring up a solid answer, until I found a post that mentioned something about jumplists in Windows 7 and VS 2010 being slow. In that post the antivirus software is blamed but that was not the issue in my case, since the issue only started occurring recently without any changes to my setup.

Using the Systems Internals (great tools there btw if you want to dig deeper into your Windows system) file monitoring tool I noticed that a file in a specific path was sort of hanging things. When I looked up the file it did point to those so-called jumplist thingies again. After clearing these shortcut files, VS started acting like normal again.

So, if you’re having issues with a slow VS 2010 on Windows 7 on saving, try clearing the jumplists like this:

Right-click the Start button
Choose Properties
Uncheck both checkboxes under the Privacy group
Click the Apply button
Re-check both checkboxes
Press OK

If you’re lucky, VS should be running smooth as butter again.

Photo by Morgennebel, cc-licensed.

10 Comments

Rodriges

Posted April 23, 2013 at 13:59 | Permalink

Thank you for that! Great work. You saved my day.
Yogesh Jindal

Posted January 29, 2013 at 23:20 | Permalink

I don’t understand why jumplists will have any relation to Visual Studio’s save, but apparently there is a relation. For me the save time reduced from 5+ seconds to few milli seconds.

Thanks a lot!!!
ariel

Posted April 18, 2012 at 8:43 | Permalink

Nice! worked like a charm, i was getting crazy!

thanks!
n3wjack

Posted February 6, 2012 at 20:40 | Permalink

No idea. I never ran into it on WinXP. This jumplist thing is also new in Windows 7 AFAIK, so what you’re having is probably related to something else.

You can however use the System Internals tool I used to help you track the source of the issue, and see what file IO is going on when the issue occurs.
That’s how I managed to figure out what was wrong on Win7.
Dorababu

Posted February 6, 2012 at 15:15 | Permalink

What to do in windows XP professional Service pack3 for the same issue..
Bill Cook

Posted January 18, 2012 at 20:23 | Permalink

Wow, you just saved me. Thanks!
nerdboy

Posted December 9, 2011 at 11:57 | Permalink

worked for me too – thanks!
HaBo

Posted December 1, 2011 at 5:14 | Permalink

Thanks a lot it has really saved a lot of work for me
Adam

Posted November 8, 2011 at 20:28 | Permalink

Bless you sir – this was my problem and it was maddening. Like you said, the moment I did this VS became smooth as butter when saving once again!
Igor

Posted August 8, 2011 at 15:38 | Permalink

Thanks – that works for me!
Before using this tip VS was hanging up