Hi,

Whenever I open up the first instance of a xaml file in Visual Studio the application 'hourglasses' for about a minute while 'Initializing Toolbox...'. This happens many many times a day.

Is there any way to disable the toolbox?

regards,

Danny

Hi Danny

I am not aware of a way to specifically disable the Toolbox.

However, the toolbox should only reset and initialize like this either on initial installation of Visual Studio,or in response to you specifically resetting it (e.g. by right clicking on the toolbox and selecting "reset toolbox") or if Visual Studio cannot detect/read your toolbox database files (in which case it will attempt to remake them).

The toolbox database files should be stored in the path %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 in hidden TBD files. You can see them by firing up a command prompt and typing this command:

DIR %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\*.TBD /A:H

I wonder if these files have become corrupted; you can test this theory either by using the Reset Toolbox command, or by closing Visual Studio and manually deleting the hidden TBD files, then restarting VS (the toolbox will be reconstructed, which is will show the Initializing Toolbox message). Then try restarting VS again and see if the problem is gone. Please note that doing this will remove any custom additions you have made to your toolbox (using Choose Items, or other methods).

Let me know how you get on.

Thanks

Mark Wilson-Thomas
Program Manager, WPF & Silverlight Designer Team, Visual Studio

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Mark Wilson-Thomas - Program Team - WPF & SL Designer for Visual Studio - posts are provided 'as-is'

Hi Danny

I am not aware of a way to specifically disable the Toolbox.

However, the toolbox should only reset and initialize like this either on initial installation of Visual Studio,or in response to you specifically resetting it (e.g. by right clicking on the toolbox and selecting "reset toolbox") or if Visual Studio cannot detect/read your toolbox database files (in which case it will attempt to remake them).

The toolbox database files should be stored in the path %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 in hidden TBD files. You can see them by firing up a command prompt and typing this command:

DIR %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\*.TBD /A:H

I wonder if these files have become corrupted; you can test this theory either by using the Reset Toolbox command, or by closing Visual Studio and manually deleting the hidden TBD files, then restarting VS (the toolbox will be reconstructed, which is will show the Initializing Toolbox message). Then try restarting VS again and see if the problem is gone. Please note that doing this will remove any custom additions you have made to your toolbox (using Choose Items, or other methods).

Let me know how you get on.

Thanks

Mark Wilson-Thomas
Program Manager, WPF & Silverlight Designer Team, Visual Studio

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Mark Wilson-Thomas - Program Team - WPF & SL Designer for Visual Studio - posts are provided 'as-is'

Hi Mark,

many thanks for the speedy response.

I have deleted the %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\ folder a few times before. This speeds the Toolbox initialization for a while, but soon after the problem reprises. I was hoping that by turning off the Toolbox (which I never use) I could avoid this entirely. I'll mark your reply as answer, but if there is any other way of fixing this I'd really appreciate a further response.

regards,

Daniel

No problem Danny.

I am concerned at the issue you're seeing, and I'd like to dig a little deeper to see why the toolbox load is triggering and progressively deteriorating for you.

If you are willing, we can probably gather some useful data by doing some performance profiling and figure out what is happening in more detail once your machine has degraded back into its slower state having flushed the TBD files.

If you're interested please drop me an email at mwthomas at microsoft dot com with the title "Volunteering to profile WPF designer toolbox slow startup issue".

Thanks

Mark

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Mark Wilson-Thomas - Program Team - WPF & SL Designer for Visual Studio - posts are provided 'as-is'

Hi Mark,

I've volunteered and recommend others to do so now!

regards,

Danny

I know this is a little bit late .. but was there any solutions to this problem. I use XaML a lot for my development work and have never used toolbox in the last 4 months. But I keep getting 'Initializing Toolbox' message often. I do not even have the toolbox docked in my design workspace.

Ananth

I don't believe that there is a way to prevent this in VS 2008. In VS 2010 the toolboxcode has gone through a lot of changes to improve performance and to eliminate this sort of problem.

To learn more about VS 2010 and to download a Beta version go to: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2010/overview.mspx

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Marco Goertz \ Sr. Dev Lead \ WPF/SL Designer "Cider" \ Microsoft

This tip may help, by avoiding all the designer's madness.
I still get the dreadful "Initializing Toolbox" steps once in while, but with the above tip, things are much much better.

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