Use the following steps to improve Visual SourceSafe's (VSS) speed (performance):

1.	Make the correct platform version of the VSS executable local, as opposed to located on the network. Set the environment variable SSDIR to the network location of the SourceSafe database.
2.	Change the Comparison methods from the default of "Full" to "Checksum" by: 1. Choosing Command Settings... from the Setup menu and selecting the pull down labeled "Compare files by." 2. Adding Compare = Checksum to the top section of the SS.ini file.
3.	Set the TEMP_PATH variable to a local directory.

This could be caused by having too many "Dir=" or "Shadow=" entries in one of the INI files. Try to create a directory structure on disk, which matches the VSS project tree. Then clean up the extra Dir= and Shadow= entries in the .ini files. That way you only need an entry in your INI file for each "tip" project.