How to debug User Controls for Performance Issues?

Question

I have several user controls loading up in a template in an Umbraco website, and basically, there are problems with a certain template loading very slow initially (after that it loads fast). But the initial page load can take up to 5 minutes to load and the CPU on the localhost goes up very high during this. This is only on 1 specific template. I have tried a stack trace and still not able to output anything useful. Is there something in code where I can set breakpoints somehow in the code itself to see where it is spending most of it's time on the server before the page gets rendered to the client side?

I need to understand, that when the page is not cached, why it takes up to 5 minutes to render the page. How can I find this out in code? Preferably with breakpoints or some ASP.NET plugin that will help me understand why this is happening?

I have determined that it is not related to IIS 7.5, and it is NOT a System Hang! It is something in the code that is causing this.

Answer 1

Glimpse should provide...a glimpse into what is causing the slow initial load without requiring you to write profiling code just to troubleshoot the issue. It is certainly worth checking out before doing the latter at least.

Also, StackExchange's MiniProfiler looks promising and may be worth checking out.

The fallback option of instrumenting your code to time its execution will be more work and require code changes of course; but if that proves to be your best option to understand the slow load times, so be it.