1. Install these patches
2. Defragment your hard disk. We have observed significant performance improvements for disk I/O intensive operations after defragmenting the hard drive. This is especially true on Windows XP which does not have the SuperFetch feature that ships in Windows Vista and Windows 7.
3. Make sure you’re running the latest service pack for your operating system.
4. If you are using Windows XP
a. We have seen issues when video hardware acceleration is enabled. Disabling the same, improves the performance. So, try disabling the graphics hardware rendering as described in this
blog post5. Try disabling Add-Ins and Extensions (Tools|Options|Environment -> Add-in/Macros Security, and Extension manager). If this works, please check with the Add-In/Extension provider to see if they have an updated version. (For example,
Resharper (5.1.1), has “Performance and memory consumption improvements”). You can also disable the add-ins by launching Visual Studio in safe mode. To do the same, Run below command from Visual Studio Command Prompt:
devenv /safemode
Decide if this improves performance then experiment by selectively disabling add-ins to determine which one is affecting your performance.
6. If you are experiencing slow performance when loading a solution
a. Try deleting the .suo file in your solution’s folder. Note that the .suo file is a hidden file.
b. If your solution contains any WinForms projects
i. Close the Windows Forms Designer before you close the solution (or Visual Studio)
ii. Disable Toolbox automatic populatin using "Tools | Options | Windows Forms Designer"
7. For User Interface performance problems (typing, scrolling, screen refreshes) try disabling graphics hardware rendering as described in this
blog post. Visual Studio 2010 users have reported that they experience better performance using software rendering on the following hardware
| Description | VendorID | DeviceID |
| ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 | 0x1002 | 0x9480 |
| ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro | 0x1002 | 0x94C1 |
| ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series | 0x1002 | 0x6899 |
| Intel® G33/G31 Express Chipset Family | 0x8086 | 0x29C2 |
| Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator HD | 0x8086 | 0x0042 |
| Mobile Intel® 4 Series Express Chipset Family | 0x8086 | 0x2A42 |
| Mobile Intel® 945GM Express Chipset Family | 0x8086 | 0x27A2 |
| Mobile Intel® 965 Express Chipset Family | 0x8086 | 0x2A02 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS | 0x10DE | 0x06E4 |
| NVIDIA Quadro FX 580 | 0x10DE | 0x0659 |
| NVIDIA Quadro NVS 290 | 0x10DE | 0x042F |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6200 | 0x10DE | 0x0221 |
8. If you're running inside a Virtual Machine or on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V enabled:
a. Try disabling graphics hardware acceleration as described in this
blog postb. Make sure you have at least 1.5 GB RAM allocated to the Virtual Machine.
c. Make sure you have hardware virtualization support on at the BIOS level (required for Hyper-V, may not be available on older hardware).
9. If you’re experiencing slow builds
a. Decrease the build output verbosity
b. Minimize the number of projects in the solution
c. Remove redundant references from projects
d. Do not build setup/deploy projects in the debug configuration
10. Use a 64-bit operating system and 4 GB of physical memory. By using a 64-bit operating system you double the virtual memory available to Visual Studio from 2 GB to 4 GB. By using 4 GB of physical memory you will reduce the amount of paging to/from disk.