Visual Studio 2015 is extremely slow

Question

I have installed Visual Studio 2015 Professional Edition, and my computer specs are Intel i7-3770 CPU 3.40 GHz, 8 GB RAM, and Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit.

I want to upgrade my project to .NET 4.6 which is written in Visual studio 2005 .NET 2.0, but I have a serious problem about speed. After I open my project (huge project) in Visual Studio 2015 it is going crazy. Building, debugging, opening menus are too slow. Sometimes I got "not responding" message. Is it about Windows 7 or can you give me any advice about my speed problem?

Are there any errors in you project due to the upgrade? They can cause a significant performance issue. — AntiHeadshot, Dec 21 '15 at 12:33
That's weird. I'm working with projects with about 4000 files and no performance problems. — AntiHeadshot, Dec 21 '15 at 12:40
I've also noticed that working with VS 2015 is *much* slower than VS 2013 - I'll monitor this thread and also let you know if I find a solution. — Dave Doknjas, Dec 23 '15 at 17:59
I'm using Windows 10, so I don't think it's just a Windows 7 issue. — Dave Doknjas, Dec 23 '15 at 18:13
I still can't find a solution to my problem. Also if I find a solution I will inform you. Thanks. — Vins4nity, Dec 24 '15 at 07:22
same here. I have a monster of a development machine (i7 8 cores, 32GB RAM (2,3 KHZ), SSD, ...) and it is painfully slow..... — user853710, Aug 02 '16 at 09:19
This is why I try to do as much w/o VS as possible. Knowing the frameworks enough to not need intellisense and knowing MSBUILD are big helps. My VS has slowed to a crawl many times like that over the years. When I do use VS (which is still daily), I make sure that it's in a VM with a very clean snapshot that I can revert to (making sure everything is in version control!) I've worked with every version of VS (even back to VC++ 1.0). It keeps getting slower. There will always be "lol it works on my machine lol" folk, but it seems that this problem is nearly ubiquitous. — David Betz, Oct 04 '16 at 00:21
@user853710 after some point it doesn't matter how much RAM you have, there's not 64 bit version of VS. — Artiom, Oct 17 '16 at 07:18
Possible duplicate of [Visual Studio 2015 very slow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31553560/visual-studio-2015-very-slow) — , Nov 08 '16 at 07:13
I've got a bunch of solutions, some large, and all work in VS2015 update 3 just fine, but when I create a web api... it just slows down ridiculously. If anyone has a clue what it might be.... oh man it'd help. — Ben Power, Sep 14 '17 at 05:36

score 91 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 24 '22 at 08:39

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You can try to apply the following steps:

Go to menu Tools → Options → Source Control and set Current source control … to None
Go to menu Tools → Options → Environment (or Accounts) → Synchronized Settings and remove this option by unchecking the checkbox.
Clean the contents in the following cache folders (do not delete these folders, instead delete their contents only) and restart Visual Studio:

Clean the content in WebSiteCache folder (can be found in
C:\Users%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebSiteCache)
Clean the content in Temporary ASP.NET Files folder (can be found in
C:\Users%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Temp\Temporary ASP.NET Files)

Note: If you have Hardware Acceleration enabled or if you use the default Visual experience settings in Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 or Visual Studio 2013, you might experience intermittent performance issues, product crashes, or rendering issues. In order to work around these issues, go to menu Tools → Options → Environment → General and apply the following settings:

For more information, visit You experience performance issues, product crashes, or rendering issues in Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio 2013.

If the problem is related to debugging, try the workaround on Visual Studio debugging/loading very slow.

edited Dec 24 '22 at 08:39

starball

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answered Dec 24 '15 at 09:08

Murat Yıldız

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I tried your methods but it didn't affect too much.I still can't find a proper solution – Vins4nity Dec 24 '15 at 11:45
Could you please have a look at the workaround mentioned on Update section? – Murat Yıldız Dec 24 '15 at 11:59
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I am trying to follow your advice but ironically VS keeps freezing. – Resource May 12 '16 at 10:30
@Resource Very interesting, because it is working not only for me also for lots of people. If it did not work for you, then must be some other reason rather than Visual Studio. Sorry for that :( – Murat Yıldız May 14 '16 at 08:20
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It worked for me. The speed increased drastically! Thanks! – Divyans Mahansaria Sep 02 '16 at 13:01
@DivyansMahansaria You are welcome. Please keep in mind that you can also use a batch script or a tool i.e. *CCleaner* for cleaning the cache folders easily. – Murat Yıldız Sep 02 '16 at 13:08
In my case the hardware acceleration was the problem. I unchecked it as mentioned in the screenshot above. Thanks a lot – MikePR Oct 07 '16 at 02:50
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@MuratYıldız Worked for me (thanks). When you say `Clean WebSiteCache folder` I assume you mean delete all files folders underneath `WebSiteCache folder` – nam Dec 18 '16 at 00:19
@nam Yes, you are right. I updated my answer, thanks. – Murat Yıldız Dec 18 '16 at 07:30
@MuratYıldız A trivial thing, but in step 3 if you change the paths to `%localappdata%\Microsoft\WebsiteCache` and `%Temp%\Temporary ASP.NET Files` it makes it possible to just copy and paste the paths into windows explorer. – axeman Jun 28 '19 at 08:41
@axeman Thanks for informing, actually the links you gave are shorter but I wanted to give the idea about the full path while letting them copy & paste. – Murat Yıldız Jun 28 '19 at 12:52
Does "Synchronized Settings" still exist in VS2019, maybe under another name? – StayOnTarget Feb 03 '21 at 19:23
It seems to be "Accounts" instead of "Synchronized Settings" under Options menu. – Murat Yıldız Feb 05 '21 at 13:07

score 67 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 28 '17 at 04:40

67

This site contains some useful tips on how to improve the Visual Studio performance, disabling features for large solutions. For example:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Text Editor -> C# -> Advanced and uncheck Enable full solution analysis
Go to Tools -> Options -> XAML Designer -> General and uncheck Enable XAML Designer (requires restart of Visual Studio)
Go to Tools -> Options -> Text Editor -> All Languages and uncheck Enable CodeLens
Go to Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> General and disable Enable Diagnostic Tools while debugging

edited Mar 28 '17 at 04:40

Matthew Czarnek

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answered Sep 30 '16 at 11:57

Ricardo Fontana

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Please provide some context to your answer, as external links may become inaccessible. – Uwe Allner Sep 30 '16 at 12:18
I did all of the above and it improved my Visual Studio performance greatly. Thanks! – Hank Jan 18 '17 at 22:07
Don't forget Tools -> Options -> Text Editor -> BASIC -> Advanced and uncheck Enable full solution analysis – thecoolmacdude May 16 '17 at 12:49
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If you disable code lense you may loose "references" links etc in C code. – Dhanuka777 Nov 02 '17 at 02:13

score 26 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 17 '16 at 10:48

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I have a large project and have experienced these kinds of slow downs too. I've improved the performance to an acceptable level by changing the scope of the Error List window to Current Document.

I also get improvements by changing from Build + IntelliSense to Build Only. But because I find the IntelliSense useful, I compromised to keeping Build + IntelliSense and scoping to Current Document.

answered Mar 17 '16 at 10:48

Ɖiamond ǤeezeƦ

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I'm using VS 2015 Update 3. There's now a "Changed Documents" option in that list, which seems like a good compromise between All and just the Current Document. – CJBS Jan 12 '17 at 17:32
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@Diamond that seems to work really well. Thanks for posting this tip. – windchaser Feb 13 '17 at 15:44

big_water · Answer 4 · 2018-02-14T19:45:01.567

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I have found that removing the ".vs" folder from your solution folder greatly increases editor speed if it becomes slow over time. It is a hidden folder in the root directory of your solution. I would recommend saving a backup of it just in case you need to revert. As far as I know, it holds user specific settings for the solution such as the .suo file as detailed here. You can try just removing the .suo file too. These folders/files will be regenerated by VS the next time you open and close that solution.

edited Feb 14 '18 at 19:45

answered Jan 04 '17 at 16:47

big_water

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Removing the .vs folder worked for me. _All_ the other solutions did not! – MoonKnight Jan 10 '17 at 17:23

score 10 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

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The Windows Defender Antimalware can cause Visual Studio to lag. As mentioned by Nostradamus in this answer:

Go to Update & Security -> Settings -> Windows Defender. Open the Defender and in the Settings selection, choose Exclusions and add the "devenv.exe' process.

Another thing I did was update ReSharper and every addon to the latest update.

I also noted that several processes called Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry, CompatTelRunner.exe was using a lot of CPU when I used Visual Studio. I disabled "Feedback and diagnostics" by following this guide.

It worked for me!

edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

Community

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answered Nov 18 '16 at 07:11

Ogglas

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This solutions so true.....Thanks very much especially for Windows Defender section – Funky81 Jan 28 '18 at 18:09

DiSaSteR · Answer 6 · 2017-08-31T12:43:01.657

Is it possible that you were trying to do different operations on solution at the same time? In my situation, the problem appeared because I was trying to open solution, while there was a process from TFS, which was trying to get latest version. Some kind of lock happened. Safest way I thought of was to restart the system, delete .suo file and it worked for me.

What else: check if your visual studio version is 64bit on 64bit system, I have uninstalled some team foundation power tools and it screwed with my VS, it produced the same problems

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 14 '17 at 06:34

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Make sure you're not working on a solution that's on a network drive.

Seems like such an obvious thing, but I missed it, and VS gives you precisely no hints as to the problem, it's just lots of "Not Responding...".

answered Sep 14 '17 at 06:34

Ben Power

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 02 '17 at 02:14

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For me the culprit was Resharper cache, simply clear Resharper cache and it works fine

answered Nov 02 '17 at 02:14

Dhanuka777

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How do you clear it? Please provide a detailed solution – Ojonugwa Jude Ochalifu Dec 03 '17 at 18:33
@ojonugwa - you can go Resharper - Options - Environment - General and then press the button for clearning caches. Also change the location from "local settings" to somewhere else - say c:\resharpercache. This will improve the speed as well. – Varun Sharma Jan 13 '18 at 00:30

score -7 · Answer 9 · answered May 24 '18 at 11:05

I suggest the quickest and easier performance enhancement (for C#) is to replace VS 2015/2017 with VS2013.

C# is largely unchanged between versions. It just takes twice as long to use 2015/2017 and I am sure I am not the only one to waste time using later (better)compilers only to have to revert.

I do not think it is unreasonable to expect to use a compiler straight out of the box. You can with 2013.

Microsoft MUST ensure VS2019 is at least as fast as 2013 (for C#)

This is not a valid option. For a start it's out of support now and not available to buy. — DavidG, May 24 '18 at 14:43

Visual Studio 2015 is extremely slow

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