Problems with Visual Studio 2005
Well, it shipped.
Isn’t that great given the recurring problem at Redmond : nothing ever ships? As we speak, Visual Studio 2005 is out there … in the real world. Now duck!
News.com reports this, “Microsoft has rejected a request from developers to push back delivery of its oft-delayed Visual Studio 2005 in order to fix bugs. … Through a feedback form on the Microsoft Developer Network Web site, developer customers asked Microsoft to release a third beta of Visual Studio 2005, which is due for completion on Nov. 7.”
VS is so buggy it’s generated a barrage of howls from developers in many quarters. Even that shrinking violet, Mini-Microsoft has this to say :
If you can’t trust your compiler, man, your whole world starts falling apart. All of you Microsofties posting “whoo-hoo, we shipped!” to your blog I hope are going in next week and, after the cheering, put deep concerted effort into creating a near-term service pack for VS. I know we wander around joking that Orcas will really be a big service pack for VS 2005, but as of this week, no one is laughing. Our customers ~ our developers ~ deserve a lot better quality and we need to react quickly to avoid a deepening distrust.
Dear O dear! We need a service pack before we’ve had the service? There could be an infinite regression coming on here.
[Via News.com and Mini-Microsoft]
where is my VS 2003? VS2005 & SQL2005 are just buggy, incomprehendible new skins to old packaging. Really sucks.
Could this crap be any slower? I am still in shock that we actually paid real money for this dev tool.
VS2003 was pretty good (I missed the edit and continue but got used to not having it). Why would Microsoft put out a product like this?
Just a friendly reminder if you are going to post complaints about the performance or stability of VS2005 on this forum.
If you look back through the thread you will find a lot of posts from Microsoft employees including myself asking that you contact us directly with your issues.
For VB issues: vbperf@microsoft.com
For C# issues: vcsperf@microsoft.com
If you just want to complain then feel free but if you’d like to see about getting the problem fixed please consider contacting these aliases.
Note: These aliases are monitored by the actual VB and VC# teams.
Oh and the performance improvements in VS 2008 are very significant so please try Beta2 which will be released very soon.
Thanks Cameron for this great reminder about the importance of not just complaining, but offering solutions and productive input as well.
.NET 2008 might just solve many of the problems folks are having with 2005 but shouldn’t Microsoft put emphasis more on fixing the bugs on 2005?
After all this is the tool (2005) many of us are now using to develop production applications… not 2008.
Not to mention all the new bugs that will surface with 2008.
I’ve spent the better part of the last three days dealing with VS2005 just freezing whenever the Intellisense kicks in to complete something. It is a VB.Net project, and so far has nothing more than a form, and some code, one extra reference to a supplied data dll.
It’s ridiculous.
Today I tried to perform the highly complicated task of adding an event handler to a menu item in a C++/MFC project (right-clik, add event handler). After populating the dialog, VS’05 took more than 3 minutes to complete this task. Yes, THAT IS 3 MINUTES! For C++/MFC development, I really think that VC2.0 was by far better than VS05. So what are the requirements to work on the VS team at MS? 3rd grade education and the ability to count to 6 using your fingers? VS05 is complete garbage for C++/MFC development.
I think the service pack 1 for VS 2005 might be causing a ton of the problems. Most of my problems came after the SP 1.
Hi,
After this post (http://www.microsoftweblog.com/2007/07/24/contact-name-for-visual-studio-ide-assistance/) where people were asked to contact me with detailed info on the issues they were seeing, around 6 people did contact me and I was able to route them to more useful contacts and to Product support team after collecting all the details of the issue.
Some of the investigations are still underway.
I really encourage people to contact me with any issue you are seeing with VS2005 or any feedback/suggestions you have for both VS2005 and VS2008, Beta2 (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx).
It would be very helpful to know the following information when you email me the issue.
1) What kinds of projects are there in the solution where the issue reports (C#, VB, C++ – Windows Forms, class libraries, web sites etc)
2) How many projects are there?
3) Are there any 3rd party component libraries or controls being used in the designers in the project
4) In the case of delays, hangs, crashes, it helps immensely to get a dump of VS process at the time of repro. Contact me for more info on how to get dumps.
Please contact me at sumas@microsoft.com for any issues on the VS IDE side
Thanks
Suma Sushilendra [MSFT]
C# IDE team
One more thing that helps to know is to know if you have SP1 installed on VS2005.
Please make sure that you have the final release version of SP1 (version 20727.42.762) and not any interim release (beta)
Thanks
Suma Sushilendra [MSFT]
C# IDE team
Debugging….
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Threading;
namespace Multithread
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
private Thread job1Thread;
private Thread job2Thread;
static readonly object threadLock = new object();
delegate void setbtnStopCallBack(bool state);
delegate void setbtnStartCallBack(bool state);
delegate void setlblJob1TextCallBack(string text);
delegate void setlblJob2TextCallBack(string text);
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
btnStop.Enabled = false;
}
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
setbtnStop(true);
setbtnStart(false);
ThreadStart thread1 = new ThreadStart(job1);
job1Thread = new Thread(thread1);
job1Thread.Start();
ThreadStart thread2 = new ThreadStart(job2);
job2Thread = new Thread(thread2);
job2Thread.Start();
}
private void job1()
{
Monitor.Enter(threadLock);
setlblJob1Text(”Computing Sum”);
MathLib.Class1 mathlib = new MathLib.Class1();
int x = mathlib.add(2, 3);
setlblJob1Text(”Answer is ” + x);
Monitor.Exit(threadLock);
}
private void job2()
{
Monitor.Enter(threadLock);
setlblJob2Text(”Computing Sum”);
MathLib.Class1 mathlib = new MathLib.Class1();
int x = mathlib.add(4,5);
setlblJob2Text(”Answer is ” + x);
Monitor.Exit(threadLock);
}
private void btnStop_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
setbtnStart(true);
job1Thread.Abort();
job2Thread.Abort();
setbtnStop(false);
setlblJob1Text(”");
setlblJob2Text(”");
}
private void setbtnStop(bool state)
{
if (btnStop.InvokeRequired)
{
setbtnStopCallBack d = new setbtnStopCallBack(setbtnStop);
btnStop.Invoke(d, new object[] { state });
}
else
{
btnStop.Enabled = state;
}
}
private void setbtnStart(bool state)
{
if (btnStart.InvokeRequired)
{
setbtnStartCallBack d = new setbtnStartCallBack(setbtnStart);
btnStart.Invoke(d, new object[] { state });
}
else
{
btnStart.Enabled = state;
}
}
private void setlblJob1Text(string text)
{
if (lblJob1Text.InvokeRequired)
{
setlblJob1TextCallBack d = new setlblJob1TextCallBack(setlblJob1Text);
lblJob1Text.Invoke(d, new object[] { text });
}
else
{
lblJob1Text.Text = text;
}
}
private void setlblJob2Text(string text)
{
if (lblJob2Text.InvokeRequired)
{
setlblJob2TextCallBack d = new setlblJob2TextCallBack(setlblJob2Text);
lblJob2Text.Invoke(d, new object[] { text });
}
else
{
lblJob2Text.Text = text;
}
}
}
}
With the standard settings you cannot debug either of the threads. The program just hangs. This worked perfectly in VS2003. I feel I have been ripped off $AU499 for a sub standard product. I only switched due to XML handling problems with .Net 1.1. Had to go to .Net 2.0
A workaround is to untick enable property evaluation and other implicit function calls in the tools menu. This of course means that you cannot see some variables as you debug.
Ian
Hi Ian,
I tried debugging the winform app you have posted the code for, in your post and I have default “Visual C# developer settings”.
I tried debugging the app several times with breakpoints placed inside several places but I could not get my VS2005-SP1 to hang.
I am sure I am missing something. Can you please tell me more specifics on how I can repro the hang?
Thanks
Suma Sushilendra [MSFT]
C# IDE Team
It is not the breakpoints that are the problem, I can set a breakpoint. The IDE takes up to one minute before I have control. If I then hit the continue or step button, control never returns, and the thread appears to stop. I get no further values in the locals, and the form never updates. I am running XP SP2
Hi. I was insatall VS2008 beta 2 with MSDN and
found what MSDN for VS 2005 corrupted. (Not found any topics and articles). How i can have both msdn versions installed?
If I were to play with VS2008 Beta (or most any other Beta software), I would install it and run it in an OS running in a virtual environment such as VMWare Workstation or Microsoft’s own VPC.
Did anyone get a chance to try the vs 2005 express versions (probably too late now with vs 2008 betas out?)? I installed those (vc, vc#, vb, vj, sql) to a slower pc and that runs much better than the “real” thing. :|
For me, vs 2008 is gonna have to wait on a pc upgrade later this year (when the prices plunge in advance of the xmas rush).
VS 2005 Pagefault Problem.
No matter how big or how small the Project is (VB Code) the application hikes up a lot of Pagefaults, Even some of Microsofts samples in VB (Vs 2005 Prof).
Can any explain Why ? And how to fix Pagefault from being so high – an example figure is – 800, 662.
Any one …
Please provide some definite responses – Thank You.
***
Hi guys,
I am a senior developer down here in sunny Australia working for mining and oil and gas projects. I have been using VS 2005 for about a year and I keep going back to VS 2003. In short I think the VS 2005 is a 2nd rate product. Its buggy and slow and not flexible enough.
I recently tried VS 2005, and it just feels awkward. Everything from the interface to the lag, everything. Sure, I thought, it was because I did not install the service packs. Guess what, I went ahead to install the latest service pack.
Here it comes:
WHAT WERE YOU GUYS AT MICROSOFT THINKING? The service pack takes half an hour to install! Not only that but it requires more than 2 GIGABYTES on the C drive. 2 GIGABYTES for a service pack! And it installs itself on the C drive, never mind that the rest of the VS is on another drive. I completely lost count how many gigs the entire VS is, but it is a lot, and it bothers me. Not because I don’t have space on my HD (I have plenty) but because all that crap that makes it big, makes it slower. VS used to be slick and lean in the past, now it’s a bloated pig.
I know I could write something constructive to help…but quite frankly I have no faith that it will help. I develop in .Net out of survival…it has a market share strangle hold in so many MS shops. The last two years have been a miserable experience in VS 2005 and I had a horrible experience playing with beta versions of Vista.
I will not be moving to Vista and will be moving into IT management and consulting soon…so I will leave M$ at the way side (I think I might swith our framework to J2EE. Will make the developers happy). When I want to develop I will play at home on my Mac with Objective-C and J2EE ( I own no M$ software anymore at home. Overpriced Alpha and Beta Software ). By the way Apple’s IDE comes FREE and kicks the crap out of VS.
Hmm, just came back to have look here after a while away trying to get some work done …
Came across the post from Cameron at MS – urging us to contact them directly with our problems and giving us two direct email addresses:
For VB issues: vbperf@microsoft.com
For C# issues: vcsperf@microsoft.com
Pity I develop in C++ isn’t it.
It is obvious, not just from this post but from the evidence of almost 2 years using VS2005, that Microsoft would rather C++ developers just went away and left them to play with their precious C# and VB.
I see your point Brian Hutchison. Although they do offer support (albeit limited) for C++ their focus is mostly on the managed languages. They want everyone to go through their new framework. Why? Control. Just like the so called “Trusted Computing Platform” they are quite and subtley trying to control everything.
It’s a shame because C++ is an awesome language and has its uses. Its not a RAD language and isn’t fit for every business application situation…but it fits for just about everything else.
Paul,
There is no reason that C++ should not be a RAD language for GUI development. The only thing holding it back in this case is Microsofts appalling integration of C++ into the IDE.
It stinks of a shoddy after thought if ever I saw one.
If people think they have problems using this IDE with C# and VB they should have a try with C++.
And don’t get me started with the whole C++/CLI “It Just Works” stuff.
Brian,
I love C++ but in reality I end up writing a lot less lines of code when I develop in C# or Java. This isn’t always a good thing, but it gets the job done rather quickly.
I can get things out the dorr a hair faster (although the program is not a “hair” faster but quite a bit slower) I save time, and, thusly, money on the development side. However there are a lot of things I wish I could do that I can in C++ (Macros and better preprocessing, true multiple inheritance etc).
Also, my developers can be younger and cheaper as these so-called RAD languages are more forgiving (I would never let one or two of my developers touch a pointer…and um… well so much for C++ for them).
The other reason I choose a managed language over C++ for some of our interface RAD? Its a lot of web stuff.
Don’t despair! We have a lot of middleware written in C++ (math libraries, optimizers etc) and are still developing in C++. Whoever said C++ was going to die was a total idiot.
Paul,
I’m not a rampant C++ is the only way nut.
Unfortunately we are in the processing of porting a 1m+ line application across from X to Windows & .NET.
Less than 10% of that code is GUI and the rest is most definitely staying as pure C++.
Unfortunately the only way open to us if we want .NET is to develop the GUI using C++/CLI interfaced back to the C++ code. It’s a struggle but it is possible.
Some newer parts of the product suite have been written in VB.NET (2003) and we have a few C# components hidden in there too – for the very reasons you state. Applications that are 90/10 in favour of GUI certainly benefit from the RAD languages.
We even have a large module written in VB6 – I’m really looking forward to bringing that one up to date :(
I totally understand where you are coming from. Although, going to dotnet changes a lot of things and you’ll need to do a lot of “re-doing” of the forms anyway, why not switch to C#? If you’re business logic is separated out and only have “wiring” in your presentation layer it should be pretty easy to switch that over. Then you could actually keep any business logic there in C++, thanks to COM Interop and P/Invoke. C++ migrates pretty well to C#. Copy and paste and with some massaging…voila!
As far as VB6? Run-away! We have ported almost all of our VB6 code over…only a few classic asp pages left to switch. I despise VB and dread ever having to work in it (.Net or not).
In response to Brian Hutchinson’s comment about the lack of support for C++:
Fair comment Brian. I actually wasn’t aware of a C++ performance alias at the time I wrote that reposnse. After seeing your mail I went and asked around and found out there IS indeed a performance alias for C++ issues.
I strongly encourage you and the others with C++ issues to contact the team directly at:
vcperf@microsoft.com
Sorry for not including that information before.
Cameron McColl
VB Performance Developer
Microsoft
One for the C++ issues is the annoying “Updating Intellisense” crap that ties up VS for at least 5 minutes…
Paul,
We are actually almost there with the port – just finishing off a few dialogs.
The application deals in a huge number of highly complex C++ data structures and classes all nested to hell and back. All the early attempts we made trying to interface the C++ and C# failed miserably for various reasons.
To be fair to good ol’ MS – when we switched to C++/CLI things started to work. Our problems were by no means over but it was a step.
The VB6 will be a nasty one – its mostly DB, graphics and charting – three of the things MS completely threw out and started again with in .NET. So no auto-conversion happening there.
Cameron,
Thanks for that – I’ll certainly give it a try.
Well, thats been a week since I emailed support and I have not even had an acknowledgment.
So much for commitment.
The performance improvements in Orcas are real and you can try the Beta2 of Orcas right now at: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx
Additionally, you can see me in a video presenting some of the VB performance improvements in action. http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=328382
I’d like to point out that most of the big performance issues that we have addressed in Orcas were submitted from customers through our performance alias.
So at the risk of sounding like a broken record please try out the Beta2 and if you find any unresolved VB performance issues please contact us at vbperf@microsoft.com.
Cameron,
I’m sorry but there is absolutely no way we can afford to switch to a new development environment, especially one that is still in Beta, at this stage in our development program.
A Service Pack to resolve real issues in the current version would be acceptable (and appreciated) but not a whole new version.
Can we read into this that there is no hope of such a Service Pack and that no more effort is being put into VS2005?
Given the vast differences in managed/unmanaged interoperability that were introduced between VS2003 and VS2005 I shudder to think what impact VS2008 would have on our development.
So, forgive me if I’m not exactly excited by this announcement.
I certainly hope the VS2008 is a better than VS2005. Frankly, it couldn’t be worse.
My company has spent over a million dollars developing our product. VS2005 has almost killed it.
It is significantly worse than 2003. It isn’t supposed work that way.
We have a server side component that is written in Java and we use Eclipse as our development environment.
We’ve developed a smart client in .Net using VS2003 and then VS2005.
Eclipse is a better IDE in almost every respect. It is faster, less resource intensive and more stable. Eclipse is FREE.
VS2005 works but it is slow, resource intensive and will fall over on a daily basis. The designer stops working for some forms and you have to close it down to get it to work.
We feel that we backed the wrong horse with .Net. There isn’t a day that we don’t regret that decision.
I really, really hope that VS2008 is what you say it is.
Chris
Once upon a time I was so excited for .Net. And actually, the framework itself is pretty good. Not quite as efficient as J2EE, but pretty good. However any technology is as weak as its weakest link, and .Net is crippled by its current IDE. I thought Microsoft was done with releasing Alpha software after Windows ME?!
Well, we’ve kept what .Net is practical and have officially switched to java. Wow! We love it. Yes Eclipse is free and I’m planning on getting XCode on my Mac (which is also free) to have fun coding at home. We’ve decided to trash our MSDN Premium subscription and move forward with true enterprise software. We’re even considering taking our newly written/converted web services and hosting them on unix or linux!!!
I have now had a response from Microsoft on the issues I raised with them. Whilst almost all of the issues I raised were answered, the answers were largely disappointing:
- will be better in VS2008 (useless to me)
- we’re aware of that (but no fix)
- there might be a hotfix coming that might, if your lucky, solve this
- I’ve reproduced that (no fix) please log it as a bug
- try these workarounds (mostly things already tried and didn’t work)
- this is how its meant to be (thanks a bunch)
- please supply reproducible examples (most are intermittent and unreproducible things – but I have sent one off)
To be fair, there was some useful stuff which I am following up on.
We are making steady progress on our project but it should not be as hard as this. Whilst I can accept that you are always working within the limitations of the tools you are using – you should not be working around their failings – at least not nearly as much as this.
Just want to say that vs2005 crashes (reboots) my new core 2 duo PC like every 3 to 10 saves of a project, doesn’t matter the language I’m using just press save and KABOOM. I haven’t been able to find nothing similar on the net.
I’m using xp sp2, vs2005 sp1, my HD is a brand new Seagate Barracuda SATA2, my Ram 1G Kingston, mobo Intel.
I’m a newb programmer and would appreciate if anyone can help me.
Gregg, check out the resources provided by Cameron with Microsoft at this comment
http://www.microsoftweblog.com/2005/11/05/problems-with-visual-studio-2005/#comment-67511
I’ve been using VB.Net 2005 for about a year I love what it can do when it works. As the only developer in my organization productivity is important and sometimes VS 2005 just kills a day. I just upgraded to a Core 2 Duo machine with 2gigs of ram and VS does run faster but most problems still remain especially the 10-20 sec delay when adding an event handler, the Delay notification box that pops up every few times you press F5 and so on. Perhaps NS should give VS 2008 to all owners of VS 2005 and just call it a bug fix/Service Pack. The only reason my organization can even think about VS 2008 is that I am at a non-profit and we have software assurance.
Here we go again… and I’m getting irritated because this issue is by far not the only one that occured today…
I’ve two projects in my solution. One project is referenced to the other. When I build the solution: no problems. When I publish the solution and install it, I can’t run it. -> On debug: Could not load file or assembly…blahblah
(Even with local copy = true)
Solution: Restart your entire pc, not only vs2005. Publish again: it works. Tsss… 2 hours wasted for nothing.
What a fantastic IDE! Not!
VS2008? Another ripp-off I don’t even consider trying! Give me back my money instead, losers!!
Contact MS to report every issue… and then what? Wait some months till it’s solved? Why should I invest my energy to fix their bullshit? (Having a good laugh) Get a decent test team, morons… instead of degrading your clients to some ordinary testers…
Has anyone upgraded to VS2008? Did it solve any of the problems?
I did a quick test upgrade of our app and they’ve changed the webservices yet again. WSE 3.0 isn’t there anymore. It means we have to go through the process of working out what needs to change and then doing it.
To upgrade from WSE 3.0 to WCF, check out
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms732008.aspx
hello
how can I change the default C# compiler (programmatically) and use different compiler or anothe rone ??
please help
Well, I spoke of switching to java a few months ago on this. I did…and I love Eclipse. great IDE! Still haven’t had time to play with coding on my Mac, but I should have some more free time soon.
Well, I got overrulled on some things, and see we have msdn subscription we got vs 2008. Its VS 2005 with a couple of minor upgrades and support for xaml. Thats it. Remember Windows 98? Remember 98 SE? basically a more stable version with a few extras? Thats VS2005 vs 2008. Except VS 2008 is still miserable with managing references.
Anyway I’ve started a company with manager and we’re doing a bunch of cool stuff…all in java and c++ baby! Screw VS!
I tried to install the IDE, but right before it finished, it restarted the computer. After the reboot, it was running very slowly, so I restarted it again via the start menu. After it started again, before I could open anything it completely locked up, and eventually I had no other option but to pull the plug, so to speak. After trying to turn it on again, it struggles in DOS for a while until it tells me I need to repair the OS. After starting the process, the computer froze again…
If anyone else has had this kind of problem before and fixed it, please email me (at kingbobxiv@gmail.com).
I am never downloading a single file from the MS website again…
I’m recently having a problem (with VS 2008 SP1) similar to some described above, in which saving any updated code-file in a website project causes my IDE to freeze for anywhere from 15 to 60 seconds. This is very frustrating for anyone who prefers to save code edits frequently…
It appears that the file save itself is occurring immediately, but the IDE freezes for 15 to 60 seconds just after the save occurs. Meanwhile, I see that the Temporary ASP.NET Files content for this application is flushed and regenerated.
I’ve tried testing this with different solutions/projects on this machine (Win2003), and the effect is consistent.
This has been going on for at least several weeks, but the freeze-delay became more frustratingly significant in the last two weeks or so. I’ve been Google-searching much of today, but have found nothing useful so far.
Anyone?
VS 2005 And VS2008 are very slow i m totally disturb due to my performance tooooooo much down as compare to VB 6.
On every run it takes too much time, my brain become hot and feel angry that’s why my logics gone Oh my God! what is this ……. when it will be like VB 6 fastest development environment …..anyone can help me regarding this matter.
One correction to my previous comment..
Hi Thogek,
I am from Web Development Tools team and this is in response to the comment you have posted about perf issues when saving code-files on Sep 16th. Can you please contact VWDPERF-at-microsoft-dot-com with the list of issues you are seeing. We would like to understand more about the issues you are seeing and help you with your performance related problems. Thanks.
Web Development Tools Team,
Microsoft
Thanks for stopping by VWDPERF and helping out our readers. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone in the Windows Live Writer team would you? =)