So I had written a big post about slow debugging with Visual Studio and how I got my time down from 30 seconds to 10 seconds. And then IE hung before I could save my post. So, that was kinda annoying, because I thought it was a good post. So maybe I’ll be buying BlogJet soon. :/

Anyhow, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version *sigh*:

• Run msconfig.exe and use the Startup tab to get rid of programs that you don’t need running (e.g. Quicktime)
• Configure your antivirus program to not scan your ASP.NET Temporary files directory
• Defrag your hard drive & make sure it has at least 15% free space.
• Clean up IE’s temporary files.
• Disable Windows services you don’t need using Black Viper’s Windows XP Services Guide (no longer online, but available here at the Internet Archive). Use services.msc to disable services, not msconfig.
• If you develop on your laptop, make sure it’s plugged in & running at full speed.
• Specify a new ASP.NET temporary directory via the web.config’s <compilation tempDirectory=”H:new directory”>. Pick a different partition, a different drive, or use a RamDisk (free one, commercial one) as your temporary directory for even more speed.
• Make sure you don’t have duelling assembly references using this ScottGu tip. Also check your project’s Properties->Reference Paths for network or internet references.
• Look at your Output Window when building to see if you notice any long pauses before certain things. I consistently saw a 5+ second pause preceeding some log4net error messages. After fixing my log4net config and changing my code to initialize log4net on demand (i.e. if I don’t log anything, I don’t load log4net), my build time dropped by 5-10 seconds.