Ctrl-Tab Shortcut Issue in Visual Studio 2013

Question

I recently upgraded from Visual Studio 2012 to 2013 and I am having issues with the Ctrl+Tab shortcut. It normally works perfectly for a bit when I first open a solution, but then stops. When it stops the dialog does not show up unless I hold Ctrl+Tab for a few seconds. When I do this the dialog flickers very quickly and then finally comes up. There have been times when it flickers, but never shows steadily.

I have checked to make sure it is not the keyboard and that the Ctrl+Tab works fine in Chrome when it is not working in Visual Studio. If I restart Visual Studio I get the same experience where it works at first and then stops.

I am using Resharper 8.0.2, however I don't think that is affecting anything.

Ellamaeellan

adaaaam, did you ever figure this out? I have had so many problems with VS2013. I am seeing exactly what you describe, including the flicker & being able to hold down to get it to come up. I have not had this on other machines though. It is happening on a Windows VM running from a Macbook. I didn't know if it was some kind of bad keyboard signals due to those factors. – Kinross

I was not able to find a solution, but I don't have the issue any more. I am using VS2013 version 12.0.31101 and resharper 8.2.1. Hope this helps. – Ellamaeellan

Have you tried to reset your setting by using devenv.exe /resetsetting flag ? Source: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241273.aspx – Ratan

It flickers because you held down the key. It is an environmental problem, you probably have a very slow or fragmented paging file. VS2013 certainly works best with 8 GB of RAM and an SSD, that money is well-spent. – Triste

Answer 1

Do you have text-to-speech narrator enabled? To fix this, just uncheck all checkboxes under "Text-To-Speech" narrator software.

--> To open Narrator using the keyboard, press CTRL+ESC, press R, type narrator, and then press Enter.

This should fix your problem.

Neural

Answer 2

I think you might solve your issue with the following info:

Under certain conditions, the navigator window gets "stuck" and doesn't close when you release Ctrl - you'll need to manually close it by making a selection or closing the navigator. This behavior occurs under the following conditions:

1) The registry value HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio[version]\General\NavigatorIsSticky is set to 1 2) Sticky keys are enabled in Windows 3) The SPI_GETSCREENREADER flag is set in Windows, which can be caused either by an actual screen reader, or by certain tools like Inspect.exe or AccEvent.exe from the Windows SDK

For condition 1 or 2, simply deleting the registry key or disabling sticky keys should solve the problem. I experienced condition 3, most likely from one of the mentioned tools failing to unset the flag properly.

Though the source talks about different issue, it may point to the same outcome you've encountered. if method 1 and 2 don't solve your issue , go to the source below and implement the described code.

Source: http://tilt.carr.no/Post/12/visual-studio-ide-navigator-stuck

I hope it will address your issue...

Update if all fails , I point you to the following issue in SuperUser: https://superuser.com/questions/816661/ctrltab-not-working-in-any-programs

Ratan

Thanks - something in here solved it for me. I'm not sure what. I ran the code for changing SPI_GETSCREENREADER but it didn't seem to be set, so I tried to set it, but when I checked the flag again it was the same. But now I can ctrl+tab with the normal navigator (Window.NextDocumentWindowNav) and it does not flicker on and off. Baffled. – Kinross

Answer 3

You could try checking to see if your anti-virus/mal-ware protection software is actively scanning C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe.

After upgrading to VS2013, we managed to considerably improve the IDE's responsiveness by adding an exclusion for this file.  In our case, AVG's malicious behaviour scanning caused even simple keyboard operations, such as CTRL+TAB between screens, to take an age.

Cheerful