Visual Studio Hacks

Speed Up Visual Studio #44

Chapter 6, Speed Hacks

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175

HACK

Disable the Start Page

The start page is the web page that is displayed by default when Visual Stu-

dio first starts up. By default, this page shows a list of recent projects and

includes tabs that list online resources and allow you to edit your Visual Stu-

dio profile. The start page does not really add any functionality that you

can’t access somewhere else. The reason the start page is both a security

threat and a slowdown factor is that it launches Internet Explorer. Visual

Studio .NET 2003 fixes this issue slightly by loading Internet Explorer only

if you are using a customized start page, so needless to say, using a custom-

ized start page is discouraged.

Visual Studio 2005 adds a completely new start page that

should not affect the startup time of Visual Studio and

should not create any security issues.

If you don’t get a lot of use out of the start page, it is easily disabled in the

Options menu. While the performance gain won’t be the same between

Visual Studio editions, it will be enough to be worth the effort. To disable

the start page, simply go to Tools

➝ Options, then choose General under the

Environment folder (General should be selected by default). On the right of

that screen, you will see a drop-down where you can specify what Visual

Studio should do on startup. I recommend choosing Show Empty Environ-

ment; this means Visual ...