Speed up Visual Studio 2005

Make sure Visual Studio 2005 SP1 is installed.
Turn off animation.
Go to Tools | Options | Environment and uncheck Animate environment tools.
Disable Navigation Bar.
If you are using ReSharper, you don't need VS2005 to update the list of methods and fields at the top of the file (CTRL-F12 does this nicely). Go to Tools | Options | Text Editor | C# and uncheck Navigation bar.
Turn off Track Changes.
Go to Tools | Options | Text Editor and uncheck Track changes. This will reduce overhead and speeds up IDE response.
Turn off Track Active item.
This will turn off jumping in the explorer whenever you select different files in different projects. Go to Tools | Options | Projects and Solutions and uncheck Track Active Item in Solution Explorer. This will ensure that if you are moving across files in different projects, left pane will still be steady instead of jumping around.
Turn off AutoToolboxPopulate.
There is an option in VS 2005 that will cause VS to automatically populate the toolbox with any controls you compile as part of your solution. This is a useful feature when developing controls since it updates them when you build, but it can cause VS to end up taking a long time in some circumstances. To disable this option, select the Tools | Options | Windows Forms Designer and then set AutoToolboxPopulate to False.

Also make sure you read tip Optimize the launch of the Visual Studio 2005.

10/10/2007

Comments:

One warning regarding turning off "Track Changes" -- if you use TestMatrix, this will have the side effect of turning off all gutter markup, as well, so you'll no longer be able to see the tool's details (test results, coverage and performance stats) in the editor.

Stevi Deter 11/7/2007 5:52:37 AM

What does "Track Changes" do exactly? What is its purpose?

Dan 11/21/2007 1:17:50 AM

When you make some changes to your source code file, text editor marks changed lines with yellow marker on the left. Then all saved changes are marked with green marker.

kostya.ly 11/21/2007 1:43:47 AM