XAML Editor hangs for 4-10 seconds driving me mad

Question

I know similar questions exists but they don't address this exact problem.

I'm having an issue with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 whereby it hangs for 4-10 seconds whenever the xaml edit receives focus. It is literally driving me to despair and I'm about to move back to Winforms. Note - Just editing the straight up xaml (i.e no designer enabled) doesn't fix the issue.

I have done the following :

• Disable the xaml designer
• Disable all plugins Checked FileMon for activity during the hang (there is none)
• Checked Disk / Paging for activity the hang (again, none)
• Uninstalled Silverlight

Setup : Windows XP64 8 Core Zeon, 16Gb RAM

Answer 1

The designer for XAML in VS 2008 is weak. Many of these issues have been addressed and dramatically improved in VS 2010 (even in beta 2).

I've started using Blend exclusively for designer-work, and just setup VS to use the XML editor (instead of the designer) for dealing with XAML files. This makes editing instantaneous within Visual Studio, although you need to swap out to Blend if you want a design time experience.