Hi all,

My company migrated from Visaul slick edit to Microsoft Visual Studio
2008.
the workspace in slickedit include 56 projects and 8750 files.
I've noticed that VS doesn't behave well. it is stuck and hardly
responding.

Is there any limitation for number of files per project?
If I will divide the files to several projects will the behaviot of VS
will be better?

Visual Studio is installed on Server 2003 SP2.

Thanks for the help.

Hi eyasso,

From what I've been able to determine, the "hard limit" for number of files in a solution is much higher than you'd hit before you run out of system resources. I'm not sure how much memory your workstation(s) or server has, but upping their memory probably wouldn't hurt. Splitting the mega-solution into multiple, smaller solutions might also improve performance. Another possible complication factor to look at is add-ins - some can reportedly slow VS down in certain large projects. If you use any, try disabling them to see if that makes any difference in performance.

Here's a blog discussion about the issue. Although they're talking about Visual Studio 2005, the discussion is still germane to VS 2008. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WhatsTheUpperLimitOnTheNumberOfProjectsWithinVS2005.aspx

HTH,

---

- Kemp Brown [MSFT]

Thank you for Kemp's kindly help, :)

Hi Eyasso,

Do you mean that sometimes Visual Studio hangs when you run it?

For performance issue, frankly speaking, this might be hard to troubleshoot online since there would be many causes for the issue to happen.

Kemp has posted some good suggestion to improve the performance of Visual Studio. Please have a try.

Additionally, you can try the following steps to deal with the case:
1. Try running devenv /Safemode to see if you can open it correctly.
2. Reboot the machine into Safe Mode. Do you still have the problem? This can isolate some third party application/driver's interference.
2. If we switch to try a new user account, do you have the problem? This can rule out the possibility of corrupted user profile.

Another useful tool is the Process Monitor tool http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processmonitor.mspx which can capture the access log.
Filter on the process name explorer.exe in the log so that you see only the related list.
This should shed some light on what are the registry keys/ files being accessed when the issue happens.

Hope this helps. If you have any concern, please feel free to let me know.

Best regards,
Yichun Chen

---

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Welcome to the All-In-One Code Framework! If you have any feedback, please tell us.

Hi eyasso,

From what I've been able to determine, the "hard limit" for number of files in a solution is much higher than you'd hit before you run out of system resources. I'm not sure how much memory your workstation(s) or server has, but upping their memory probably wouldn't hurt. Splitting the mega-solution into multiple, smaller solutions might also improve performance. Another possible complication factor to look at is add-ins - some can reportedly slow VS down in certain large projects. If you use any, try disabling them to see if that makes any difference in performance.

Here's a blog discussion about the issue. Although they're talking about Visual Studio 2005, the discussion is still germane to VS 2008. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WhatsTheUpperLimitOnTheNumberOfProjectsWithinVS2005.aspx

HTH,

---

- Kemp Brown [MSFT]

Thank you for Kemp's kindly help, :)

Hi Eyasso,

Do you mean that sometimes Visual Studio hangs when you run it?

For performance issue, frankly speaking, this might be hard to troubleshoot online since there would be many causes for the issue to happen.

Kemp has posted some good suggestion to improve the performance of Visual Studio. Please have a try.

Additionally, you can try the following steps to deal with the case:
1. Try running devenv /Safemode to see if you can open it correctly.
2. Reboot the machine into Safe Mode. Do you still have the problem? This can isolate some third party application/driver's interference.
2. If we switch to try a new user account, do you have the problem? This can rule out the possibility of corrupted user profile.

Another useful tool is the Process Monitor tool http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processmonitor.mspx which can capture the access log.
Filter on the process name explorer.exe in the log so that you see only the related list.
This should shed some light on what are the registry keys/ files being accessed when the issue happens.

Hope this helps. If you have any concern, please feel free to let me know.

Best regards,
Yichun Chen

---

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
Welcome to the All-In-One Code Framework! If you have any feedback, please tell us.

Hello Kemp,

Thank you for your reply.

You were right about the Add-In. I have Visual Assist Add-In which is the cause of the bad performance. After disabling it VS started to work fine.
The only problem is that it takes VS 1 minutes to close when I click the Close button.

I can't split the mega solution to multi solution. If I split the Mega project to sub projects will that help?
Thank you agin.

Hello Yichun and thank you for your reply.


By saying hangs I mean freeze and it looks like it is because of Visal assist.
Tunning devenv /Safemode will disable intelligence. No?

Thank you again.

Hi Eyasso,

Thank you for your reply.

The command "devenv /Safemode" can be helpful to eliminate the possibility that third party Add-ins or packages might be causing problems. It will not disable intelligence in VS IDE.
I've tried running this command on my machine. Intelligence works well. :)
For more detailed VS command line switches information, see: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xee0c8y7.aspx

Hope this helps!

Best regard,
Yichun Chen

---

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
Welcome to the All-In-One Code Framework! If you have any feedback, please tell us.