Visual Studio 2010 F10/F11 Stepping Slow, Toolbar Stepping Fine?

Question

I\'m running Visual Studio 2010 with SP1, as well as R# 5.1, and a few other extensions (like PowerCommands and Productivity Power Tools). Somewhere along the lines, my debuggi

Answer 1

Try debugging with Firefox or Chrome. There must be something about the interaction with IE that is causing this behavior.

Answer 2

I had exactly the same problem - extremely slow debugging with keyboard (F10 for example). Some symptoms:

• if I click Step Into on toolbar, then everything works normal,
• the lag during debugging is present not only in Visual Studio but anywhere (notepad, browser,...),
• if I set any other browser as default browser in Visual Studio (I tried Firefox), then it works OK,
• if I disable third-party browser extensions in IE, then it works OK,
• if I enable third-party browser extensions and disable LastPass, then the problem is gone and debugging with keyboard is fast again!

So, try to disable LastPass extension if you have it or all extensions and try it.

Edit1 - somebody allready posted this on LastPass forum: http://forums.lastpass.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=61029

Edit2 - and here on SO also :) https://stackoverflow.com/a/8186670/1110039

Answer 3

I've found a deeper explanation for this problem.

I had this problem, with the symptoms user1110039 described BUT I haven't installed LastPass toolbar. And my default browser is Firefox.

Well, my application uses SetWindowsHookEx() function for setting a system wide shortcut. Which happens to be the reason for blocking F10/F11 debug keys (only in Windows 7 64 bits) It doesn't happen under 32 bits.

I've just removed the hook from the debug build and it works ok. I reckon the problem with LastPass is some system wide hook in the code of the extension.

Answer 4

I experienced that very slow step by step debugging too, and fixed it by closing the threads window.

Answer 5

In my case it was the Call Stack window (Visual Studio 15.9.13) that caused the lag!

Even when I stepped over a very simple line like ++i; it took around 1-2 seconds until the debugger stepped over to the next line. Closing the Call Stack window or hiding it fixed the lag for me immediately.

Answer 6

It's really odd that the keyboard stepping is slow while the toolbar buttons are not. Typically whenever I hear about a slow stepping experience my recommendation is to disable automatic property and ToString evaluation as this is the most likely cause

• Tools -> Options
• Debugger -> Uncheck "Enable property and .ToString evaluation"

I'm not very hopeful that will fix this instance. It sounds like a problem with a misbehaving extension that processes keyboard input. Your best bet is to disable the extensions one by one and see which one fixes the problem. I would do it in the following order

• Productivity Power Tools
• Power Commands
• R#