Visual Studio 2013 context menus slow only in web application project

Question

I recently upgraded from VS 2010 to VS 2013 for a new project. I'm finding that when right-clicking on a folder (but not an individual file) in my Web Application project, it takes about 2 seconds for the context-menu to load. The other dozen or so non-web projects in the solution do not have this performance problem. Additionally, within that slow context menu, if I click on the Add-> item to bring up the sub-menu to add a new view/class/whatever, that menu takes anywhere from 5-10 seconds appear. If from there I think choose something like "New Scaffolding Item", that dialog can take about 30 seconds to appear.

Others on my project do not seem to be having this issue, though they've got slightly better hardware and are running Windows 8 (vs me running Windows 7). I've tried disabling the visual experience elements as described here but it did not seem to have an effect. My system only seems to be using about 5GB of the 8GB available RAM, and my CPU Usage never goes above 30%. I've tried disabling ReSharper in case that was somehow causing the slowdown, but it had no effect on performance.

How can I fix this huge slowdown?

Microsoft Visual Studio Premium 2013
Version 12.0.30501.00 Update 2
Microsoft .NET Framework
Version 4.5.50938

Installed Version: Premium

LightSwitch for Visual Studio 2013   06191-004-0454001-02932
Microsoft LightSwitch for Visual Studio 2013

Office Developer Tools - May 2014 Update ENU   06191-004-0454001-02932
Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013 - May 2014 Update ENU

Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2013   06191-004-0454001-02932
Microsoft Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2013

Visual Basic 2013   06191-004-0454001-02932
Microsoft Visual Basic 2013

Visual C# 2013   06191-004-0454001-02932
Microsoft Visual C# 2013

Visual C++ 2013   06191-004-0454001-02932
Microsoft Visual C++ 2013

Visual F# 2013   06191-004-0454001-02932
Microsoft Visual F# 2013

Visual Studio 2013 Code Analysis Spell Checker   06191-004-0454001-02932
Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2013 Code Analysis Spell Checker

Portions of International CorrectSpell™ spelling correction system © 1993 by Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition Copyright © 1992 Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved.

ASP.NET and Web Tools   2013.2.50425
Microsoft Web Developer Tools contains the following components:
Support for creating and opening ASP.NET web projects
Browser Link: A communication channel between Visual Studio and browsers
Editor extensions for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Page Inspector: Inspection tool for ASP.NET web projects
Scaffolding: A framework for building and running code generators
Server Explorer extensions for Windows Azure Web Sites
Web publishing: Extensions for publishing ASP.NET web projects to hosting providers, on-premises servers, or Windows Azure

ASP.NET Web Frameworks and Tools 2012.2   4.1.21001.0
For additional information, visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=309563

ASP.NET Web Frameworks and Tools 2013   5.1.20409.0
For additional information, visit http://www.asp.net/

Common Azure Tools   1.1
Provides common services for use by Azure Mobile Services and Windows Azure Tools.

JetBrains ReSharper 8.2.1   C# Edition build 8.2.1000.4556 on 2014-05-19T16:12:38
JetBrains ReSharper 8.2.1 package for Microsoft Visual Studio. For more information about ReSharper, visit http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/. Copyright © 2003–2014 JetBrains, Inc.

NuGet Package Manager   2.8.50313.46
NuGet Package Manager in Visual Studio. For more information about NuGet, visit http://docs.nuget.org/.

PreEmptive Analytics Visualizer   1.2
Microsoft Visual Studio extension to visualize aggregated summaries from the PreEmptive Analytics product.

SQL Server Data Tools   12.0.30919.1
Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools

TechTalk SpecFlow   1.9.3
TechTalk SpecFlow - Binding business requirements to .NET code, http://www.specflow.org
Copyright © 2009–2013 TechTalk

Windows Azure Mobile Services Tools   1.1
Windows Azure Mobile Services Tools

Windows Azure Tools   2.3
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 - v2.3.20320.1602

Windows Phone 8.1 SDK Integration   1.0
This package integrates the tools for the Windows Phone 8.1 SDK into the menus and controls of Visual Studio.

Workflow Manager Tools 1.0   1.0
This package contains the necessary Visual Studio integration components for Workflow Manager.

Update: In a hope to fix this, I completely wiped my hard drive and updated to Windows 8. I also upgraded to 16GB of RAM. I then installed just enough software so that I could compile the project. I'm still getting the same slowdown. However, if I create a brand new Web Application, the context menus are speedy. Could something about the project itself cause a slowdown?

Answer 1

We were struggling with the same issue from a long time. Right Click on a project or on the any folder inside project used to take at least 10 seconds for the menu to appear. The solution was quite simple.

Just get rid of all the broken references.

Please refer following image. Such broken references need to be removed.

Remove such references and try right click again, context menu will appear withing a fraction of seconds.

This worked for us.

Answer 2

Just to add to the possible solutions, I had the same problem.

BTW I am using VC-2013 Ultimate with R# and NCrunch.

Right clicking on any solution item took forever. I closed the solution and deleted the _ResharperXXX folder in the solution directory.

The problem was gone after I started the solution again.

This has happened a few times now and I have managed to fix it by doing the above every time.

Answer 3

If its happening for a single project means, you can try out the following

1. Delete .suo file in your project.
2. And then Restart the visual studio.
3. Try loading your project again.

This may provide you a fine solution.

Answer 4

I am having the same issue as you. Old web projects are effecting and new web projects are ok.

What I found is I am using a lot of NuGet package in the project and local NuGet cache (C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\NuGet\Cache) is empty because this is new machine.

I recompile the whole solution. NuGet packages are caching in that folder. After compilation is successfully, problem solved.

I am not sure what is happening but this solve my problem. Strange thing is I need to recompile all solutions. Uncompiled solutions have this issue and after compile, this is gone.