Visual Studio 2012 using high amounts of memory.

Steviemoyne

Hi all,

I've an issue with Visual Studio 2012 using massive amounts of RAM, over 900mb loading a multi project solution.

The obvious answer is to get a better PC, however what I'm looking for is ways to configure Visual Studio 2012 so it does not use so much memory.

I've only got 4gb RAM in this machine on a 32 bit windows 7 OS. It's not ideal for programming I know but it's what I'm limited to.

If anyone has any tips, tricks for reducing the memory size I would really appreciate it.

I cannot split the project up into smaller solutions unfortunately.

Side note: I've stopped startup programs, am not using any other programs apart from VS (and of course the project I'm debugging). And there are no background processes that *could* be shut down...I've already shut them down and stopped them from starting automatically using msconfig.

Steviemoyne

Just a quick update on this: I've since tried turning off windows 7's Superfetch service but still ran out of memory in Visual Studio 2012 and it made the problem worse if anything since things took forever to load (which I expected when turning it off). I turned it back on since it was still running out of memory.

Oh and I changed the compatibility settings of the EXE to disable visual themes, thinking it might help even a little bit. At this stage I feel like Tesco...every little helps...expect it doesn't :rolleyes:

Steviemoyne

Disabled the visual themes as mentioned in the previous post and I'm also running VS 2012 with the switch /SafeMode. It seems to be making things better for the time being at least.

I don't have that many addons, those that I do have I need. Eg: Telerik for Winforms. Other than that the only other addon I have is an IronPython one...which I rarely use. Might consider getting rid of it since running without addons appears to be fixing the issue.

srsly78

Install x64 windows, upgrade ram (dirt cheap). Big solutions with loads of projects will always use lots of ram.

You can reuse the licence key for your 32bit windows, no need to buy again. In 2014 noone should be using 32bit windows.

Steviemoyne

Wasn't aware I could reuse my existing key for windows. I've only got 4gb ram at the minute which is all 32bit can handle but 64 will at least bring me up to 8gb. Thanks for the advice.

neil_hosey

resharper also slows mine down alot! I had to remove it..

satchmo

srsly78 wrote: »

You can reuse the licence key for your 32bit windows, no need to buy again.

Awesome, I'd no idea that was true - thanks!

ozmo

I've a largeish DotNet soultion (16 projects) loaded up at the moment in VS 2010- and its only using 209 MB ram - I frequently run two or three all running at the same time.
Only 4G ram in this machine here but never have a memory problem.

All the usual default extensions + TFS and GhostDoc. Is there anything you really need from VS2012 that's not in VS2010?

srsly78

A large project = 1 project.

A large VS solution = hundreds of projects.

That being said.... I have a vs2012 solution with 167 projects open and building. Feck all ram is used

tsiehta

Is it slow? Using 900MB isn't a big deal if you have 4GB available, and you want your processes to be taking advantage of the fact that you have all that RAM. And don't disable SuperFetch, it's not going to fix anything.

If it is slow, attach VMMap to VS to see what it's loading, to better give you an idea of where the memory usage is coming from: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/dd535533.aspx

Steviemoyne

tsiehta wrote: »

Is it slow? Using 900MB isn't a big deal if you have 4GB available.... And don't disable SuperFetch, it's not going to fix anything.

Your right, disabling superfetch didn't do anything, and yes it's slow. 900mb+ ram usage tends to bottom out the ram (free goes to 0) at that stage it's hit and miss as to if visual studio runs out of memory, normally if that happens I have to restart visual studio.

Take in the fact that I do work on multiple forms across multiple projects (over 50 projects), the hassle of waiting for them to load after every restart (my god VS 2012 is the slowest program I've ever used) the below article sums up most of my speed / performance issues nicely.

I have moved to not debugging my program unless absolutely necessary instead opting to run as release. That's why I've marked this as solved, until I manage to upgrade to windows 7 and get some more ram I can't see it improving. Just wish I had my programming / gaming pc from home instead of this sorry excuse of a pc.

Feel free to discuss this between yourselves but I no longer have the issue so unless something catches my eye I won't reply to this thread, going to see about getting a copy of VS 2013 through microsoft Dreamspark which should be the more inexpensive and hassle free option than upgrading windows and buying more ram.

http://yosoygames.com.ar/wp/2013/12/microsoft-we-need-to-talk-about-visual-studio/