FIX: You may experience slow performance when you work with a Visual Basic solution that contains many projects in Visual Studio 2005

When you work with a Microsoft Visual Basic solution that contains many projects in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, you may experience the following performance issues in the Visual Studio 2005 IDE:

• You experience a slow response time when you use single-step debugging. For example, the response time is slow when you press F10 to step into a line of code.
• You experience a slow response time when the Error List or the Task List is updated by Visual Studio 2005.
• You experience a slow response time when you use the IntelliSense feature.

Hotfix information

A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft. However, this hotfix is intended to correct only the problem that is described in this article. Apply this hotfix only to systems that are experiencing this specific problem. This hotfix might receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by this problem, we recommend that you wait for the next software update that contains this hotfix.

To download this hotfix from the MSDN Code Gallery, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

Note The MSDN Code Gallery displays the languages for which the hotfix is available. If you do not see your language listed, it is because the Code Gallery resource page is not available for that language.

Note If additional issues occur or if any troubleshooting is required, you might have to create a separate service request. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for this specific hotfix. For a complete list of Microsoft Customer Service and Support telephone numbers or to create a separate service request, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

Prerequisites

You must have Visual Studio 2005 installed to apply this hotfix.

Restart requirement

You do not have to restart the computer after you apply this hotfix.

Registry information

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
To obtain improved performance from this hotfix, add and then enable the OptimizePDB registry value. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the following registry key:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\VB Editor
   Note If you are using Visual Basic Express, the registry key should be the following:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VBExpress\8.0\VB Editor
3. Click Edit, click New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type OptimizePDB, and then press ENTER.
5. Right-click OptimizePDB, and then click Modify.
6. Type 1, and then click OK.
7. Exit Registry Editor.
   
   After you add the OptimizePDB registry value, open the Visual Basic solution in Visual Studio 2005. Then, click Clean Solution on the Build menu.

The OptimizePDB registry value makes the Visual Basic compiler optimize the .pdb file to improve performance. However, the new .pdb file format is not fully compatible with the old .pdb file format. Therefore, a version of Visual Studio 2005 that does not have this hotfix applied may be unable to read the new .pdb file format. To resolve this issue, apply this hotfix on all development computers, or click Clean Solution or Rebuild Solution on the Build menu before you start debugging the solution.

File information

The English version of this hotfix has the file attributes (or later file attributes) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time item in Control Panel.

This hotfix includes two packages:

• A Visual Studio 2005 package
• A Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 package

You must install both packages.

Visual Studio 2005 hotfix files

The .NET Framework 2.0 hotfix file

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

Note If you install this hotfix and you do not have the Msxml6.dll file installed on the computer, you may receive the following error message when you access an XML comment block: To resolve this problem, install the MSXML 6.0 Parser that is included on the Visual Studio 2005 installation media.

For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: This hotfix also includes the fixes that are described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles: