About Visual Studio 2005/2008

DynamicHelp

With Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, DynamicHelp is E-X-T-R-E-M-E-L-Y slow. This is particularly noticeable after installing products like SftBox/OCX 4.5 or SftTree/OCX 6.0 which have very comprehensive help information.

Even though DynamicHelp builds its information display asynchronously in a background task, it completely uses up any available CPU cycles, resulting in 100% CPU usage (or 50%+ on dual core systems), rendering the system very sluggish and unresponsive. Visual Studio 2002 and 2003 do not have this problem and DynamicHelp is almost instantaneous. We hope that this problem will be fixed at some time. Our products have no control over this, but we can offer some workarounds.

Workaround A)

Some products (like SftTree/OCX 6.0) allow you to customize options during installation. If you do not want to use DynamiHelp, deselect the option to install DynamicHelp.

Workaround B)

When you don't need DynamicHelp, close (or hide) the DynamicHelp window, this will stop DynamicHelp from updating its contents. This workaround has the advantage that you still have access to full DynamicHelp when you need it (and you are willing to wait for its contents to update)

Workaround C)

Remove large DynamicHelp XML files in the following Visual Studio directory:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\HTML\XMLLinks\1033
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\HTML\XMLLinks\1033

This must be done immediately after installing a product (such as SftBox/OCX), otherwise Visual Studio uses cached information.