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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 ...