Visual Studio has long held the crown for being the best IDE in existence. Even annoying hipster, Steve Jobs is god, skinny jeans are comfortable, I really am original, programmers will have a hard time denying the beauty of Visual Studio (even if they won't use it). But when you are at the top, there is only one place to go. Down! And after my latest upgrade to VS 2013, I thought maybe MSFT was trying too hard to make changes for the sake of changes and were actually making our beloved Visual Studio worse.
Now some people will complain about the new color scheme introduced in VS 2012 and the inexplicable decision to make the menu buttons all-caps, but the thing that really annoys me is when my work suffers. Those changes don't make my work suffer. But lately VS 2013 has become very slow and behaving "erratically." But with the following changes, I was able to get VS working for me again.
Disable Source Control Integration
Now this might only relate to those using Git, but if you are using Git, Visual Studio might be making your CPU run high and your work rate run low. I don't need VS Git integration. I use the lovely Git Extensions (https://code.google.com/p/gitextensions/). Before disabling Git integration, my CPU utilization from VS went to 25% or higher. This was frustrating to say the least. Disabling this has had the biggest impact on VS performance. Update Tools -> Options -> Source Control -> Plug-In Selection and set the value to "None".
Disable JavaScript Debugging
While I generally do web work, I don't use Visual Studio to help me with JavaScript debugging. I use the console.log for that. Disabling this little feature makes starting up and running a site much faster. Update Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> Just-In-Time and uncheck the "Script" option.
Disable Browser Link
Not really sure how much this helps but since I am not currently using it, I figured I would disable it. Just make sure there is no check mark next to "Enable Browser Link".
And...Remove the All Caps Menus
Well, this might not make a difference in performance, it might make a difference in your sanity levels.
- Open regedit.exe
- In regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\General\
- Right-click the General folder and create a new DWORD value called SuppressUppercaseConversion.
- Double-click the new registry entry and set it's value to 1.
- Restart Visual Studio
Well that's it. I hope it helps and if I come up with any more, I will let you know.