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Visual Studio takes a lot of extra time loading symbols for external dlls which I'd rather not load. I have fiddled with my symbol settings in VS2008 and these settings seem to be affecting VS2010

How do I stop it loading 3rd party symbols?
I've tried:

  • devenv /resetuserdata
  • Tools > Options > Debugging > Symbols (I can't remove or uncheck the pdb file location of: "Environment Variable: _NT_SYMBOL_PATH")
  • I've cleared the above location like so: set _NT_SYMBOL_PATH=
    actually this made a huge difference (it was previously SRVc:\symbolshttp://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols)
  • I've deleted everything from: %localappdata%\Temp\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root\

The next thing would be a VS re-install, failing that an OS re-install, but if it saves me 14 seconds every time I press debug it would be worth it.

Myster
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    Did you ever get an answer? This just started happening to me and it's annoying. – Mud Apr 27 '11 at 04:47
  • I thought I should add a note to say; I never figured this out, but since I've reinstalled, upgraded, etc the problem is gone (mostly). – Myster Jun 11 '12 at 05:12

5 Answers5

46

Try Debug -> Delete All Breakpoints

Community
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Neil
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  • This was a surprise, thanks for posting - solved the same issue for me. – Leather Nov 14 '12 at 11:06
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    I don't believe this. IT WORKED!!! I even bougth a new computer to get rid if this!! Of course it didn't work, just improved a little. THANKS DUDE!!! can i vote many many times??? – Daniel Dolz Dec 15 '12 at 17:31
  • Clearing breakpoints worked for me too. I found this link first (http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsdebug/thread/98f50717-c842-4bb1-8676-f64d453f80d1). – hIpPy Jan 28 '13 at 21:32
  • I was taking 5 minutes to launch a web app from visual studio - this solved it. +1 – Ripside Oct 18 '13 at 22:52
  • Simple and very effective. Works. – barneymc Jan 08 '14 at 11:41
  • My solution got a big .xml file to process. I can reproduce this slow issue by putting a breakpoint in that file. Get ride that breakpoint and it get back to the trails (why a breakpoint in a xml file?) – jean Jun 02 '14 at 17:03
21

Things to try

  • Tools > Options Debugging > General
  • Tools > Options>Debugging > Symbols
    • Only Specified Modules
    • Or All modules unless excluded and exclude those 3rd party
    • I was able to remove all checks under .pdb locations, but I had d:\refsrc\symbols as an added location
Maslow
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0

I had this trouble too. I did not think that I had set _NT_SYMBOL_PATH but somehow it was set to the path I use when using WinDbg. I figured this out by running ProcMon from the SysInternals Suite and filtered out everything except DevEnv.exe and saw what files it was trying to access when debugging my application.

I deleted the _NT_SYMBOL_PATH environmental, restarted VS and everything runs like it should.

I offer this not so much for the answer which was supplied in the initial question but as guidance on how to figure out what was wrong.

sjp
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For me, I had previously turned on Debugging -> Symbols -> All modules and forgot to turn it off when I was done with a particular project. Turning off this setting greatly improved my load times.

Jess
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I had this trouble too. And I fix it easily. Just do: Debug->Options and Settings->Symbols. In Symbols I checked Only Specified Modules. Everything works fine again. Hope this helps.

Max
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