Visual Studio 2010 Intellisense slows down everything

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3590489

Question

I have the issue with Visual Studio 2010, after a while, running exceptionally slowly and slowing everything else down with it. I'm meaning:

  • Most other open windows become unresponsive
  • Typing is delayed
  • Build times increase 10-fold
  • Saving takes forever

I am sure this is an Intellisense issue; disabling it solves everything, and when this happens in Task Manager I find a couple of vcpkgsrv.exe (the Intellisense thing) running at about 160,000K memory (This is about the same as an older, less graphical intensive games). However, I would like to run Intellisense. The only way I have of solving this at the moment is to abort these processes when they slow stuff down.

I have tried getting the patch and think it is installed, because I cannot install it again.

EDIT: I'm running Windows XP, with VSC++ Express. I have 2GB RAM, and a dual core 3.2GHz Processor. Anyone help please?

Was it helpful?

Solution

I had the same problem with my Windows XP machine. After a long search I found a solution so I'll post it back here since it was the first result I got on google.

Install Windows Automation API update for Windows XP (KB971513).

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=cd55456d-9703-42a0-b982-8a8a89ca0aa3&displaylang=en

OTHER TIPS

It might indicate an issue with the solution's sdf file. Try to close the solution, delete sdf file and load the solution again.

If you find your Visual Studio 2010 system pausing frequently when you are entering code... sometimes to the point of fading your code and saying "Not Responding" on the title bar, you are probably having Intellisense problems. Especially if you are working on code that won't even compile in Visual Studio and never will because you are just using VS as an editor and will be building your code in some other environment i.e. embedded, you will get this a lot.

To get around it, I disabled Intellisense (it just draws the red squigglies under undefined variables etc.) and "Preprocesses" your code to enable and disable code inside #ifdef flagged areas. This is not useful enough in my environment to justify the one to ten second pauses every few seconds while I am entering code.

To disable Intellisense, go to Tools | Options click on Text Editor then on C/C++ and then on Advanced. Scroll the right side down to see "IntelliSense" and set "Auto Quick Info" to False.

Bingo! The problem will be gone!

This is not a common complaint, which makes it likely it is environmental. Some random shots in the dark:

  • Not having at least 2 GB of RAM
  • Installing VS2010 on an old machine with a badly fragmented disk drive
  • Editing extremely large source code files (> 10,000 lines)
  • Keeping a very large number of editor tabs opened (> 50)
  • A bad interaction with a Visual Studio add-on
  • A bad interaction with a system add-on

The IntelliSense engine for C++ has lots of tweakable items in Tools + Options, Text Editor, C/C++, Advanced. This blog post describes these options in detail. If your machine is old and not well maintained (i.e. never ran a disk defrag, lots of shell extension handlers) then consider a new one or a system wipe.

3.5+ GB memory recommended!

VS 2010 uses a huge amount of memory with intellisense on any decent size project.

The patch listed above as correct answer did not help for me. Reinstalling the OS from scratch didn't help. Installing VS 2010 SP1 did not help. What did help was a memory upgrade from 2GB to 3.5GB.

I'm running Windows XP, SP3.

My slow downs and non-responsive issues were caused by a security product. The name of the process was "Rtvscan.exe". It hogged all the disk I/O. It was part of Symantec's security suite on my Win XP machine. It's a corporate laptop, so my corrective options were limited. I used Process Explorer to suspend the process. (If you kill the process, it simply restarts).

Link to Process Explorer on MS Web site: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

Another setting which worked for me for JavaScript. Go to Tools - Options - TextEditor - JScript Uncheck "Format completed line on Enter"

I removed *.suo file and VS 2010 works now fine

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