Visual Studio 2013 hangs when opening a solution

Question

I installed VS2013 (v12.0.21005.1) and added ReSharper 8 (v8.0.2000.2660) a day or two ago. That day it was fine. Now I'm lucky if I can get it to open one solution in a whole day. It opens OK by itself, but when I try and open a solution from within - via the menu - it hangs, badly. If I right-click a solution in Windows Explorer and 'open with VS 2013', it opens then hangs, in exactly the same way. Every now and again, for hours, I get a little notice that it's busy with something.

Anyone know what could be wrong, before I endure a reinstall that doesn't fix the problem?

Answer 1

Suspending Resharper Worked for me. Goto

Tools -> Options -> ReSharper -> General -> Suspend Now

Now your solution will load very fast. After your solution fully loaded, you can change the Resharper settings to Resume Now.

Answer 2

For anyone still referring this helped me:

I had to always delete .vs12.suo file to load the project.

I came across this thread from Microsoft and following that I created registry entry which fixed my issue with Solution load.

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/860685/visual-studio-hangs-after-10s-when-loading-solution-corrupt-suo

Answer 3

Lots of suggestions here and elsewhere but the only thing that permanently worked for me had to do with the start-up project I'd set. This is what I did:

1. Delete the .suo file as suggested elsewhere.
2. Start VS and open the solution. All should be well at this point.
3. Leave the start-up project as-is, even if it's not what you want.
4. Save the solution. (Possibly do as someone else suggests and open a file, clean, build/re-build, etc, but I didn't have to do any of that.)
5. Close the solution and exit VS.
6. Re-start VS and open the solution.
7. Change the start-up project to whatever it should be
8. Save the solution. (Possibly again do the open file, clean, build/re-build, etc.)
9. Close the solution and exit VS.
10. Restart VS and re-open the solution and all should be well.

This might or might not work for you but I'd tried everything I could find - registry changes, debugging VS from a second VS session, you name it - but nothing else worked for more than a single start/open.

Answer 4

Deleting all ".suo" files worked for me. There were several copies due to opening the solution in multiple versions of Visual Studio.

Edit:

Possible path could be:

PathToSolution\.vs\ProjectName\v14\

.vs may be a hidden folder.

.suo is filename.

Answer 5

I had this issue recently as well, and found that disconnecting my computer from the internet when loading the project fixed it. With this, I managed to cut loading times from several hours down to seconds. Since my network cable is not particularly accessible, I simply disabled my network adapter before loading the project (in Control Panel).

This soon became frustrating, however, and I recently looked into the problem again. It seems that logging on to my Microsoft account in Visual Studio ultimately fixed the problem, and I now have no more issues loading projects.

This may work for you as well (if you haven't yet fixed it - but since there is no accepted answer here, I assume that the problem is persisting), so I suggest that you at least try disconnecting from the internet, even if you would rather not enter your Microsoft credentials.

Answer 6

In my case, VS 2013 Professional was hanging on every startup, even without opening a solution because the license was no longer valid.

Last item in the log file:

<entry>
    <record>367</record>
    <time>2015/07/13 20:11:05.051</time>
    <type>Information</type>
    <source>UserConnection</source>
    <description>[e-mail] signed in for IDE user</description>
</entry>

And on the msdn.microsoft.com subscription page: "Your subscription is no longer active, contact your administrator."

I had to get an updated subscription from my employer.