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Performance Troubleshooting Article and VS2010 SP1 Change

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We are getting very near to the final release of VS2010 SP1 (if we were landing a plane the wheels would be down right now with the runway in front of us).  Thanks again for all your feedback and stay tuned for the imminent release of the product.

We’ve concentrated heavily on fixing issues you have reported, including those related to performance and reliability.  The team has collected the most common scenarios we see that may cause issues and published it here:

Visual Studio Troubleshooting

One of the interesting patterns we have seen is that Windows XP users are twice as likely to hit hardware graphics related issues than those using Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server.  In some cases users report slower performance of VS2010 along with the potential for crashing behavior.  Very frequently this turns out to be attributable to poor/old video drivers or other operating system components.  You can manually turn off hardware acceleration in Visual Studio if you think this is impacting you.  To do this, choose Tools, Options and turn off the automatic options:

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Based on the number of machine reports we have found with video driver issues, we are taking the step of turning off hardware graphics acceleration in Visual Studio by default for Windows XP users when you install the final version of VS2010 SP1.  This change will only impact the Visual Studio IDE, not other applications or your version of Windows.  You can also easily turn hardware acceleration back on using the Tools, Options dialog above.

I generally really hate making setting changes like this; as a developer I don’t like it when my environment changes defaults.  At the same time I’ve seen enough data about the issues people are hitting today and I want to ensure everyone has a good experience.  I’m blogging about this change now to provide the background on the decision as early as possible.

Thanks again for your feedback on VS2010 SP1 and get ready for downloads!

Jason

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 05, 2011
    Can we have it by THIS Monday ! Then please put a word out to the WPF dept that they need to have a roadmap and stuff.There is a lot of loss of focus at microsoft ! Please support : http://www.fixwpf.org/

  • Anonymous
    March 06, 2011
    Hello, Is already defined a release date for the SP1? Thanks a lot.

  • Anonymous
    March 06, 2011
    Hi, A release date is fixed for SP1 ? I have a machine to reinstall soon... :) Thanks

  • Anonymous
    March 07, 2011
    Read this post in blogs.msdn.com/.../visual-studio-2010-enhancements.aspx

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2011
    The SP1 is now officially live, read more here: http://bit.ly/fw0oQm

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2011
    @confonam: Why should we trust the person behind the "fixwpf" site? They clearly have no idea what they're talking about. For example: "... technology bets like HTML5 or Silverlight are more likely to be the end result for desktop development ..." "... HTML5 is slowly being positioned as the proposed Windows 8 desktop development story ..." This appears to be part of the same FUD circulated last November after the PDC, when some people claimed that HTML5 was replacing Silverlight. Now they're trying to claim it's going to replace WPF as well? Idiots.

  • Anonymous
    March 12, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 13, 2011
    So he worked on WPF, left MS, and now spends his time criticizing MS for WPF? Sounds like a reasonable bloke, then. :)

  • Anonymous
    March 14, 2011
    A quick search for "Scott Barnes Microsoft" shows that he's been responsible for quite a lot of FUD about WPF and Silverlight, with claims that both are "dead" and will be replaced by HTML5. These claims have been echoed across the web, adding unjustified weight to the "we can't use WPF because it's dead" argument. These aren't the actions of someone I'd trust to "fix" WPF. As Mike Taulty said, "iPhone 4 is Dead": mtaulty.com/.../iphone-4-is-dead.aspx

  • Anonymous
    March 14, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2011
    @Scott: None of your "WPF is dead" posts that I've read come across like that. I haven't seen any that imply "this will happen if we don't do something"; they all seem to say, "this has already happened, and it's too late". Many of these posts have been picked up by online news pubilshers, and quite often the tone has been changed from "an ex-Microsoft employee has suggested that" to "Microsoft have confirmed that", possibly for journalistic impact. These news articles have then inspired dozens of people to visit WPF forums and ask, "What should we use now that Microsoft have confirmed that WPF is dead?". These questions are typically followed up by a few sensible people saying "it's not dead yet" and dozens of others saying "yeah, I read that article too, it's definitely dead, let's have a funeral". All of this negativity feeds back to the PHBs, who don't have time to read everything, and just take away the headline: "WPF is dead". That leads them to veto WPF on any new projects - who wants to start a new project in a dead technology? When significant numbers of large firms stop using WPF because their PHB thinks it's dead, Microsoft will be less inclined to devote any resources to fixing it. If that happens, WPF won't stop working immediately, but it will start the slow and painful death reserved for obsolete technologies. That's why I think of your posts as FUD.