Visual Studio .NET 2003 on Windows 7 hangs on search

Question

So I have Visual Studio 2003 running on Windows 7 - yeah I am aware it isn't officially supported - and no, unfortunately I can't change that situation :-(

For the most part it works OK but I have a specific problem, that I can't figure out. The application hangs if you do a project wide search (Ctrl - Shift - F) for a string.

I have a reasonably powerful machine and all the other heavy tasks like compiling and debugging all work fine. It also works if I restrict the search to the current document (Ctrl - F). I am running it as administrator and VS.NET 2003 SP1 has been applied.

The size of the project does not seem to be a problem since a colleague is also experiencing this issue for a single project solution containing 5 pages.

I am currently using Windows Search as a work-around and I was wondering if there is something I missed that I should try.

Answer 1

Try disabling the Aero theme in compatibility. Yeah seriously...

Answer 2

You can do this by right clicking the shortcut to launch VS.NET 2003 and selecting properties, choosing the “Compatibility” sub-tab and then checking “Disable Desktop Compositing” as well as “Disable Visual Themes”

Answer 3

I use Windows 8.1, and the path
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
is invisible and could not be created manually inside regedit.exe. So I wrote a registry file "abc.reg" with text:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\\Common7\\IDE\\devenv.exe"="^ RUNASADMIN DISABLEDWM DISABLETHEMES"

Execute it by double click icon of "abc.reg" (may be Run As "Administrator").
It works.
(The post is for your convenience in this certain case)