Start
Applies to: 
Visual Studio 
Visual Studio for Mac
Note
This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here
The Start option is a VSPerfCmd.exe option that initializes the profiler to the specified profiling method.
Syntax
VSPerfCmd.exe /Start:Method /Output:FileName [Options]
Parameters
Method
Must be one of the following keywords:
TRACE - Specifies the instrumentation method.
SAMPLE - Specifies the sampling method.
COVERAGE - Specifies code coverage.
CONCURRENCY - Specifies the resource contention method.
Required options
The Output option must be specified when Start is specified on the command line.
Output: filename
Specifies the output file name.
Exclusive options
The following options can only be used with the Start option on a command line.
CrossSession|CS Enables cross-process profiling. The option names CrossSession and CS are both supported.
User:[domain\]username
Enables client access to the monitor from the specified account.
WinCounter: Path [Automark:n]
WinCounter specifies a Windows performance counter to include as a mark in the profiling data file. AutoMark specifies the interval in milliseconds between collections of the data file.
Invalid options
The following options cannot be used with the Start option on a command line.
Status Status applies to those processes that are profiled. It lists processes and threads and their current profile state (On/Off). For example, if a process is stopped, Status will not indicate this in the report. Status will show that the process is either profiled or not.
Shutdown[:Timeout]
Turns the profiler off.
Example
The following example demonstrates how to use the VSPerfCmd.exe Start option to initialize the profiler.
VSPerfCmd.exe /Start:Sample /Output:TestApp.exe.vsp
VSPerfCmd.exe /Launch:TestApp.exe