05 October, 2011

Fix: Visual Studio 2010 SP1 cannot open file

Today I ran into a really strange bug with my new PC (DELL Vostro, windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, intel-i5)  and a fresh install of Visual Studio 2010, it cost me 10½ hours of searching and testing different solutions from many sources:
http://www.ninjacoding.net/archive/2010/01/17/visual-studio-hangs-when-opening-certain-files.aspx
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vstsdb/thread/f76ebf64-4cd3-4cac-a970-40a23e7171d3/
Some of them might help others, but they did not help me !!!

I had originally thought that it was connected only to .sql files, but quickly found out that actually all files was affected, and Visual Studio would enter a freeze/un-responsive state and sometimes throwing a random exception.

The solution that helped me was found by pure chance when checking the reset settings of visual studio, I stumbled upon a setting in: Tools>Options>Environment>General>"Use hardware graphics acceleration when available" this was checked/enabled.... and I noticed that actually when I created or opened a file i VS it was there but just not showing, unless I re-sized the application, and when typing this was also not shown until the window was re-painted. so un-checking this setting, and all problems where gone.

Hope that this can save others from spending time on a stupid bug.

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