VS2008: Projects now take forever to open

Question

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: 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: 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.