Visual Studio 2008 Tweaks

Nick Floyd

1 min read

Bring the mountain to Mohammad. Always heard it, never really knew what it meant until now - most references say that it means "to do the impossible." Something that I propose here - tweaking Visual Studio 2008 so that it runs faster, opens quicker, and "feels" like less of a drain on your system.

{>archcoder gratuitous DISCLAIMER<}
Do this at your own risk. All of these tweaks worked extremely well for me and a few of my cohorts but we don't have random addins like uberhax0rMyCodeBitz or b00IWannaBaRAILsDev installed - just things like code-rush (great re-factoring tool), and some redgate profiling addins (which are some seriously solid tools).

Here are the hacks, errr tweaks:

Reduce / turn off auto recover.  By default it runs auto recovery every 5 minutes – that’s foolish (does the product suck that bad that it has to take precautions because it knows it will crash?  Keep in mind by changing this, if / when the ide crashes you might lose some work, but if you’re like me I save every few minutes) try this:
Tools >> Options >> Environment >> AutoRecover
30 or 60 minutes on save info
Keep AutoRecovery Info 1 day
Tools >> Options >> Environment >> AutoRecover
Uncheck Auto Recovery
Kill the startup page or make it useful
Tools >> Options >> Environment >> Startup
At startup : Show empty environment
Tools >> Options >> Environment >> Startup
Show open project dialog box
Change the max # of parallel project builds
Tools >> Options >> Projects and Solutions >> Build and Run
I set my max # of parallels to 10 (note:but that’s with a quad proc box)
Kill the Toolbox population when opening up a win form
Tools >> Options >> Windows Forms Designer >> AutoToolboxPopulate = False
Kill the junk
Close all vs IDEs
Go to: [System_Drive]:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\
Rename 9.0 folder to something like 9.0bak
Open up the IDE and load a project (this actually helped me with the “Initializing Toolbar” when opening an aspx file)
Back up your settings
Tools >> Import / Export Settings