Visual Studio Hacks

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Chapter 6, Speed Hacks

#45 Load Files from the Command Prompt

HACK

Start from the Run Dialog

As with starting any application, part of the time it takes to start Visual Stu-

dio is spent hunting for it in your Start menu. Many developers find it much

easier to simply open the Run dialog and enter the name of the application

executable. To do this with Visual Studio, all you need to do is open the

Run dialog (Windows Key-R or Start

➝ Programs ➝ Run), then type devenv

and press Enter. This is by far the fastest way to get the application up and

running. There is also a switch for

devenv called /nosplash, which will sup-

press the splash page for Visual Studio. So, you can type devenv /nosplash

into the Run dialog (or the command prompt) to have Visual Studio start up

without the splash page.

Keep MRU Lists Under Control

One sure way to slow down the startup of Visual Studio is to have a lot of

files and projects in the recent file and recent project lists. This is especially

apparent if you have any projects in the MRU list that are located on a net-

work share. Visual Studio checks various file attributes, and if there is a

problem with the network connection (or if you’re simply not connected to

it when you start up), Visual Studio will hang while trying to access these

files.

The best thing to do is simply keep these lists under control using the

method outlined in “Edit the Most Recent File and ...