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 wan

Answer 1

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!

Answer 2

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#)

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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...".

Answer 6

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.