So I have Visual Studio 2003 running on Windows 7 - yeah I am aware it isn't officially supported - and no, unfortunately I can't change that situation :-(
For the most part it works OK but I have a specific problem, that I can't figure out. The application hangs if you do a project wide search (Ctrl - Shift - F) for a string.
I have a reasonably powerful machine and all the other heavy tasks like compiling and debugging all work fine. It also works if I restrict the search to the current document (Ctrl - F). I am running it as administrator and VS.NET 2003 SP1 has been applied.
The size of the project does not seem to be a problem since a colleague is also experiencing this issue for a single project solution containing 5 pages.
I am currently using Windows Search as a work-around and I was wondering if there is something I missed that I should try.
Try disabling the Aero theme in compatibility. Yeah seriously...
You can do this by right clicking the shortcut to launch VS.NET 2003 and selecting properties, choosing the “Compatibility” sub-tab and then checking “Disable Desktop Compositing” as well as “Disable Visual Themes”
I use Windows 8.1, and the path
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
is invisible and could not be created manually inside regedit.exe.
So I wrote a registry file "abc.reg" with text:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\\Common7\\IDE\\devenv.exe"="^ RUNASADMIN DISABLEDWM DISABLETHEMES"
Execute it by double click icon of "abc.reg" (may be Run As "Administrator").
It works.
(The post is for your convenience in this certain case)