Visual Studio .NET 2005 hang ups and Process Explore to the Rescue

June 25, 2005 @ 1:03 am

Over the last few days I’ve been spending a lot of time with VS.NET 2005 and being a beta and all there are a number of nasty user interface issues with the beta IDE. The worst problem is that there is some sort of focus bug that seems to lock the UI in an endless loop trying to select one control or another.

Sometimes clicking away from VS.NET and then back into it seems to fix it but in many situations that doesn’t work. However in a few situations this doesn’t work (especially in WinForms where the cursor seems to get stuck in the toolbar on almost every context switch). It happens quite frequently in Web Forms as well, but not as commonly as WinForms.

Anyway, it turns out that you can use Process Explorer from Systernals and its Window|Bring to Front option to force VS.NET to properly release focus of whatever hang up situations it gets into.

Another problem I see if I run with multiple instances of the IDE running minimized that I can’t the IDE back to restore to the desktop. Here too, no amount of Windows coercion seems to work, but using Process Explorer and the Bring to Front option causes the UI to pop back up where it’s supposed to be.

Maybe this saves some of you some headaches and a few restarts of the VS.NET 2005 IDE…

Process Explorer just comes in so handy all the time – don’t know how I ever got along without this utility as my Task Manager replacement

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re: Visual Studio .NET 2005 hang ups and Process Explore to the Rescue
by Gabe June 25, 2005 @ 1:01 am

I occasionaly have this same problem in VS 2003. I will notice that my mouse "gets stuck" inside an ASP.NET table when resizing or that I can no longer bring a minimized window back. I have found that ALT+TAB to another app and back usally (not always) gets me back to normal.

re: Visual Studio .NET 2005 hang ups and Process Explore to the Rescue
by Jan Vanek December 12, 2005 @ 6:47 am

Usually this is caused by source code, where the window is waiting for the handler, while minimized.
JV

DotNetSlackers: Visual Studio .NET 2005 hang ups and Process Explore to the Rescue
by DotNetSlackers Latest ASP.NET News October 11, 2006 @ 2:21 pm

re: Visual Studio .NET 2005 hang ups and Process Explore to the Rescue
by Carpii December 01, 2006 @ 7:49 pm

If you have problems with focus, the first thing I would do is turn off Windows XP's 'Advanced Text Services.'

1. Click Start, then Control Panel.
2. If Control Panel is in Category view, click the Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options link, and then click the Regional and Language Options icon.
If Control Panel is in Classic view, double-click the Regional and Language Options control panel.
3. Click the Languages tab. Click Details.
4. Click the Advanced tab. Check Turn off advanced text services.
5. Click OK. Click OK.
6. Close the control panel.

ATS has caused me enormouse problems with window focusing, sometimes sending the focus careering off to another applcation when i try to copy text from the currently focused app.
Who knows, it may be the source of your VS problems.

Its also worth noting that running Napster whilst trying to install VS2005 is NOT a good idea. I dont know if the installer attempts to see if IE is running before beginning, but Ive found that its not able to detect the IE instance in Napster, and leaving Napster running caused my machine to hang during the install.
I shut Napster down, and the installer completed without problems. Im not saying this will fix everyones woes, but its worth a try because the installer is about as stable as a pyramid of cards