Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Over the last year we've seen several people report having performance problems when using F5 to run/debug ASP.NET 2.0 applications using Visual Studio 2005.  The problem in theses cases typically wasn't with building the project, but rather that it sometimes took the debugger a really long time to hit the first breakpoint once it attached to the application (45+ seconds and longer sometimes).

We recently posted a public hotfix patch that you can download and apply to fix this issue.  You can download the hotfix immediately here.  You can read more about it in this KB article here.

Background on the Issue

The particular bug fixed in this hotfix was surprisingly difficult to track down.  The slowdown issue occurred when breakpoints were set in multiple source files in the same project that had the same short file names (for example: two default.aspx.cs files) and which were organized in a certain directory structure pattern on disk.  The patch fixes this issue and should prevent the debugger from pausing when trying to load the web project's assembly symbols in this case.

For Technical Support with this Patch

If you have any problems installing the patch or find that you still see issues after you install it, you'll want to contact Microsoft product support for assistance and they'll help debug it further.  Calls to Microsoft Product Support are free if they are related to a product bug (either a QFE HotFix request or a product bug you are running into).  You can find details on how to contact Microsoft product support on this page (it allows you to lookup the local phone number to use by country).

Other Hotfix Patches

I've posted in the past about other ASP.NET and VS related hotfix patches that can be publicly downloaded.  Here are a few pointers to these posts:

More Performance and Tip/Tricks/Tutorial Posts

Make sure to check out my Tip/Trick: Optimizing ASP.NET 2.0 Web Project Build Performance with VS 2005 post if you have build performance issues with VS 2005.

Please visit and bookmark my ASP.NET 2.0 Tips, Tricks, Recipes, and Gotchas page for a good listing of some of my previous ASP.NET and Visual Studio posts and tutorials.

Hope this helps,

Scott

Published Tuesday, August 21, 2007 12:43 AM by ScottGu
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Comments

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 4:55 AM by Mehfuz Hossain

Things i have noticed all these years that as number files in VS project grow up, the debugging experince becomes slower and slower. Also , currenty i am using Ready boost feature of windows vista, that significantly improves the build performance of large project, because its dumps all the api reference needed to build the project to the flash drive which really helps.

But, would the loading of debugging symbols and api reference , would be faster , if it is to use the RAM instead of accessing hard drive everytime.

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 6:08 AM by Vikram

But I think this should have been done in the big SP 1 that came for VS 2005. Is the problem also persistent in VS 2008 beta 2? If yes I hope it will be fixed in the release version.

Also Is it advisable to use this hot fix, If I am particularly not facing this issue very much.

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 8:36 AM by Ruchit S.

thnks for this. I've come across this very rarely.

Ruchit S.

http://ruchitsurati.net

***************************************

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 9:26 AM by F.Khadempour

Thanks.

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 9:26 AM by CarlosG

Scott, as always great work.  I love that you let us know about these kind of issues which would otherwise go unnoticed.

Unfortunatelly I have to take the opportunity to ask about other issues specific with the VS 2005 IDE, specially developing ASP.NET sites.  I have talked to quite a few people that have issues such as mine and I have yet to see any mention of it anywhere.

The issues are when adding controls to web pages.  When you add controls, or are selecting them and expect to see the properties pane see their details, many times the pane takes too long to refresh or even worse doesn't refresh at all and sometimes sort of hangs and only displays the document properties and nothing more(on this ocassions we have to shutdown the ide and restart it to get rid of the problem).  It is very bothersome to have to select properties from the context menu of the control to force the refresh.  

This is specially true inside formview and detailview controls.  And when you have many controls, it causes lots of grief and errors (imaging a developer changing properties on many items, only to realize that since the pane didn't refresh, he or she changed over the properties of the same control instead of dozens of them.

Thanks!

# Hotfix available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 9:59 AM by Blake Niemyjski

Scott Guthrie has released news of a new hotfix available for Visual Studio 2005. It resolves a infrequent

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 10:16 AM by Rob Bazinet

Thank you!  This is great news as this is one of the biggest pet peeves I have had with working with ASP.NET in Visual Studio 2005.

I assume this is fixed in Visual Studio 2008?

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 10:44 AM by Cynthia McFarland

Scott, thanks!  You blogs are always helpful.  I totally agree with Ray Ozzie that you're indeed a "blogger extraordinaire".

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 10:49 AM by ScottGu

Hi Rob,

>>>>>> I assume this is fixed in Visual Studio 2008?

Yes - this is also fixed in VS 2008.

Thanks,

Scott

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 10:52 AM by ScottGu

Hi Vikram,

>>>>>> But I think this should have been done in the big SP 1 that came for VS 2005.

Unfortunately this particular issue wasn't understood/known in the SP1 timeframe (and might have actually gotten worse in that timeframe due to another SP1 fix).  It was surprisingly difficult to track down and get a consistent repro.

>>>>>> Is the problem also persistent in VS 2008 beta 2? If yes I hope it will be fixed in the release version.

It is fixed for VS 2008 (I believe already in Beta2)

>>>>>>> Also Is it advisable to use this hot fix, If I am particularly not facing this issue very much.

If you aren't running into the issue then we don't recommend installing the hotfix (this is true for any hotfix we ship).

Hope this helps,

Scott

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 10:54 AM by ScottGu

Hi Mehfuz,

>>>>>> Things i have noticed all these years that as number files in VS project grow up, the debugging experince becomes slower and slower.

I'd recommend trying to steps in the KB article to see if you might be running into this hotfix issue.  Specifically, disable all breakpoints and try running debugging, or disable the "Require source files to exactly match the original version" option in tools->options.  If you see debugging performance get faster, then applying this hotfix will help.

Thanks,

Scott

# Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET - ScottGu’s Blog « Accidental Technologist

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 10:54 AM by Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET - ScottGu’s Blog « Accidental Technologist

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# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 10:58 AM by ScottGu

Hi CarlosG,

>>>>>> The issues are when adding controls to web pages.  When you add controls, or are selecting them and expect to see the properties pane see their details, many times the pane takes too long to refresh or even worse doesn't refresh at all and sometimes sort of hangs and only displays the document properties and nothing more(on this ocassions we have to shutdown the ide and restart it to get rid of the problem).  It is very bothersome to have to select properties from the context menu of the control to force the refresh.  

If you can send me an email with more details about this issue I can have someone investigate and take a look.  One thing to check is also what extensions you have running inside VB (resharper, etc), as well as whether you have any custom hardware like a laser pointed mouse, or any custom application running with interactive UI at the same time on top of VS.

The reason I mention these other scenarios is that the property grid in VS is typically updated on the idle thread of VS - and sometimes these other programs can end up causing lots of input to be sent to VS which keeps the idle thread busy and causes updates to be slow.  The laser mouse pointer issue was one we helped someone else debug about a year ago - basically the driver was too sensitive and was sending thousands of microscopic movement messages a second as the person was typing.

Thanks,

Scott

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 11:29 AM by Colin Blair

Problems with the properties menu getting refreshed can be helped by making sure that the ASP.NET Development server is turned off when you aren't debugging.

What is really annoying is when you click on a control, change its properties, and then discover that you had actually changed the properties of a completely different control because the properties window never refreshed itself. I can understand the properties window waiting to refresh itself to contain the new controls properties, but it would be nice if the properties were cleared as soon as a control loses focus.

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 2:12 PM by rojay12

Please Help Scott.

Question regarding VS 2005 and deploy web sites.  I have encounter an issue regarding the compiliation and deployment of a website when the solution is stored on a Mapped Drive (NETBIOS error).  I have seen many posts online surrounding an issue but could never resolve it.  I have many tools at my dispossal and have been given the green light by management to purchase anything that can help fix this issue, do you know of any solutions? Please help.

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 2:39 PM by BenD

In addition to CarlosG one way you could quickly reproduce this (if it's the same problem I have) is to add several controls (drag/drop) on to an ASP.Net page then try to modify the properties of any control other than the last one. You'll find that only the last one remains selected in the property grid.

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 6:15 PM by Juan María

Hi all,

you can read this post in spanish here:

thinkingindotnet.wordpress.com/.../parche-publico-para-problema-de-rendimiento-debugeando-aspnet-en-vs-2005

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 9:37 PM by ricredor

Hi Scott,

Thanks for this great article. I just want to get your opinion in adding another level of security on the data itself for the same role. I'm working on a retail company that has several stores, and there are roles that can access a single store, certain stores or all stores. What do you think would be the logical solution for this  issue. I'm thinking of adding another table with all the user id's and the stores attached to the id.

Thanks a lot.

Ricky

# Finally the VS2005 patch to fix the slow start on debugging.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 12:52 AM by Al Pascual

You can download it from here What does it fix? The problem starting the debugger, more info at Scott

# Link Listing - August 22, 2007

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 1:43 AM by Christopher Steen

Link Listing - August 22, 2007

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 4:38 AM by dotnetUncle - .NET Interview Questions

Good article & useful hotfix!

# MSDN Blog Postings » Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 5:10 AM by MSDN Blog Postings » Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Pingback from  MSDN Blog Postings  » Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

# Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 5:19 AM by Noticias externas

In case you missed this on Scott's blog... See weblogs.asp.net/.../21

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Thursday, August 23, 2007 2:08 PM by John McMillion

Hi Scott,

Do you think this patch would fix a debug performance issue I only started seeing only after applying VS2005 SP1?  The performance seems to have slowed on Stopping Debug, and a new little dialog always pops up now that is titled "Stop Debugging in Progress...", and the message is "Debugging is being stopped, but is not yet complete.  You can force debugging to stop immediately, but any processes being detached may be terminated instead.  This window will automatically close when the debugging has completely stopped."  Then below is a button labeled "Stop Now".

It seems so slow to stop the debugger now, after sp1, that I try and avoid debug mode more and more.  Before sp1 for vs2005, it worked quite well.

Any thoughts?

Thank you!

John

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Thursday, August 23, 2007 4:04 PM by ScottGu

Hi John,

>>>>> Do you think this patch would fix a debug performance issue I only started seeing only after applying VS2005 SP1? The performance seems to have slowed on Stopping Debug, and a new little dialog always pops up now that is titled "Stop Debugging

It might fix it - or this might be something else we don't know about.  Can you send me an email (scottgu@microsoft.com) with more details and we can have someone take a look.

Thanks,

Scott

# Noticias 24-Agosto-2007

Thursday, August 23, 2007 7:05 PM by La Web de Programación

ScottGu anuncia la disponibilidad de un interesante hotfix para Visual Studio 2005 que mejora el rendimiento

# Izindaba #6

Friday, August 24, 2007 1:37 AM by From the software development trenches

Time for another weekly roundup of news that focuses on .NET and general development related content

# Fix available for ASP.net debugging issue « Coding with a Caffeine Rush…

Friday, August 24, 2007 4:10 AM by Fix available for ASP.net debugging issue « Coding with a Caffeine Rush…

Pingback from  Fix available for ASP.net debugging issue « Coding with a Caffeine Rush…

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 8:45 PM by Felix

Hi Scott,

Would this also be related to slow performance when using the "Attach to Process" and attaching to the aspnet_wp.exe process?  When I try to debug by this method, it's extremely slow.  I installed this patch already too.

Thanks,

Felix

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Wednesday, August 29, 2007 1:46 AM by Haissam Abdul Malak

Thank you scott.

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Friday, August 31, 2007 3:36 AM by Ivo Pas

Hello,

It appears since I applied the Hotfix, when I get a compiler error, Visual Studio won't display the file it is in anymore. Does this relate to the hotfix or is it a setting in Visual Studio I overlooked?

# Links of the Week August 2007

Saturday, September 01, 2007 4:56 PM by Chris Love's Official Blog - Professional ASP.NET

Well another month has pasted, and there are more links to be shared. These are just a few I came across.

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Saturday, September 08, 2007 12:53 PM by ScottGu

Hi Ivo,

>>>>>> It appears since I applied the Hotfix, when I get a compiler error, Visual Studio won't display the file it is in anymore. Does this relate to the hotfix or is it a setting in Visual Studio I overlooked?

I'm not sure what that issue is.  Can you send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) with more details about it?

Thanks,

Scott

# ASP.NET 2.0 Tips, Tricks, Recipes and Gotchas - ScottGu's Blog

Saturday, September 22, 2007 8:19 PM by ASP.NET 2.0 Tips, Tricks, Recipes and Gotchas - ScottGu's Blog

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# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Monday, September 24, 2007 9:49 PM by jmunsch

I have applied the HotFix but the problem still persists.

The App is running in IIS7:

85+ seconds for the browser to load the app after compile;

I see the same slow results with Ctrl+f5 (Start Without Debugging)

With or without breakpoints in the code; same result

However, if I open a browser window and go directly to the page, not thru VS; The page loads instantly.

If is switch the application to use the built Cassini web server; is see simular results 60+ seconds.

My machine is a Dell XPS-410 Quad Core; is this possibly a threading issue?

# re: Public Hotfix Patch Available for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET

Tuesday, September 25, 2007 12:24 AM by ScottGu

Hi jmunsch,

If you can send me an email (scottgu@microsoft.com) we can have someone take a look and figure out what the problem is.  It definitely sounds like something is going wrong there.

Thanks,

Scott

# Debugging performance issues

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 8:27 AM by Creative Jar Blog

Debugging performance issues