Visual Studio 2013 hangs when opening a solution

Question

I installed VS2013 (v12.0.21005.1) and added ReSharper 8 (v8.0.2000.2660) a day or two ago. That day it was fine. Now I\'m lucky if I can get it to open one solution in a wh

Answer 1

Check for Windows updates

I had this problem too. Furthermore, I couldn't open my Windows firewall settings (trying to block VS's internet connection).

When opening update settings (Windows 8), I saw there was a pending update ("found today"), so I rebooted my computer, letting Windows update. After that, VS and the firewall worked fine again.

Check your hardware

I've had the problem a second time; even Windows 8's update page would keep loading forever. It was an issue with my (non-OS) hard drive: https://superuser.com/questions/756261/various-parts-of-windows-8-and-visual-studio-2013-get-blocked-by-possibly-comm?noredirect=1#comment978074_756261

Answer 2

For anyone still referring this helped me:

I had to always delete .vs12.suo file to load the project.

I came across this thread from Microsoft and following that I created registry entry which fixed my issue with Solution load.

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/860685/visual-studio-hangs-after-10s-when-loading-solution-corrupt-suo

Answer 3

For me this appears to have something to do with the project having the MVC 4 project type guid (E3E379DF-F4C6-4180-9B81-6769533ABE47). Removing this guid from the .csproj resolved the hanging for me. (An additional wiping of the .vs folder was required after removing the guid.)

Answer 4

For me the solution was to disable source control (Set plugin to None in Tools->Source Countrol). I think it was trying to sync some huge Git repo for some reason (have a couple of massive repos, but not in the tree I was trying to open).

Answer 5

I found the following to be the better approach to debugging VS based on MS Connect instructions

Please help to confirm if your captured dump file is a 32-bit dump file. If it is a 64-bit dump file, please use the following step to capture a new dump file.

1. Start Visual Studio.
2. Start another instance of VS.
3. In the second instance click Tools | Attach to Process...
4. In the list of processes locate devenv.exe.
5. Click Select... and explicitly choose 'Native' and 'Managed' code.
6. Click OK and OK to close Select dialog and Attach to Process dialog.
7. Go back to the first instance of VS and repro the hang.
8. Upon the hang, control should go to the second instance of VS. If not please go back to the second instance of VS manually, and hit "Break All".
9. In the second instance click Debug | Save Dump As Minidump with heap.

If you are running the VB profile you will not see the Save Dump As menu item. To add this menu item:

1. Select Tools -> Customize
2. Select the Commands tab
3. Select Debug from the Menu bar dropdown
4. Click Add Command...
5. Select Debug from the Categories list.
6. Find the Save Dump As entry in the Commands window.
7. Click OK (the Save Dump As... command is added to the top of the Debug menu).
8. Click Close

You can get detailed steps about how to get the dump file and call stack at http://blogs.msdn.com/debugger/archive/2009/12/30/what-is-a-dump-and-how-do-i-create-one.aspx

If you find the problem is with Resharper Addin you can then report the issue via - http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/RSRP

Answer 6

I restored a previous version of the .vbproj file and it solved it.

I don't know what was in the newer version but the problem was something inside the .bvproj file itself.