VS2013 C++ : slow linking process

Question

Have you ever experienced a slow linking process in a C++ project compile (I'm using VS2013)? I get linking process taking 15 minutes after a 5 minutes Build. A Rebuild or Visual Studio restart does not fix the issue. Task manager shows mspdbsrv.exe taking a full core (25% on a 4-core), and pdb file creation is very slow, Kb after Kb it reaches 50 Mb. Additional info:

• the same project on another computer build and link in acceptable time.
• antivirus is disabled
• I've tried changing the pdb file creation location: no success
• I've set the linker output Verbose, but it stops at one debug row and then wait all the time there.
• VS2013 is updated to SP4
• Hard disk activity led on my laptop is mostly turned off, so there's no full activity on the disk.
• I'm running Windows 7 Pro.
• VS2013 is run with administrator rights

Thank you.

Answer 1

Fixed changing "Debug Information Format" from /ZI (Edit and Continue feature) to /Zi. I still have no clue why this cause a slow linking only on a specific computer and not for the others. Hope this could help people coming here for the same issue.

Answer 2

Is it using Link-Time Code Generation? On VS2010 that step was single threaded so it takes much longer than the apparent compile step. On later versions this step was improved to be multithreaded, according to blog posts. It also mentioned that PDB access is a bottleneck. So, maybe you have an old mspdbsrv.exe on that system? Look at the version info on the file, compared across machines. There might also be some option to control its locking and multi-use behavior, hidden away someplace.