Visual Studio .NET 2003 on Windows 7 hangs on search

Question

So I have Visual Studio 2003 running on Windows 7 - yeah I am aware it isn't officially supported - and no, unfortunately I can't change that situation :-(

For the most part it works OK but I have a specific problem, that I can't figure out. The application hangs if you do a project wide search (Ctrl - Shift - F) for a string.

I have a reasonably powerful machine and all the other heavy tasks like compiling and debugging all work fine. It also works if I restrict the search to the current document (Ctrl - F). I am running it as administrator and VS.NET 2003 SP1 has been applied.

The size of the project does not seem to be a problem since a colleague is also experiencing this issue for a single project solution containing 5 pages.

I am currently using Windows Search as a work-around and I was wondering if there is something I missed that I should try.

Mammal

Never mind, I cross-posted this and got a better response in Serverfault and SuperUser. – Mammal

I wrote a blog post detailing some of the stuff I needed to configure in order to get VS 2003 to work on Windows 7 - technikhil.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/… – Mammal

Answer 1

Try disabling the Aero theme in compatibility. Yeah seriously...

Winifred

Wow - That was the reason it hangs... I checked the compatibility setting to "Disable Desktop Compositing" and search started working. – Mammal

If you don't see "Compatibility" tab (I don't have this tab for devenv.exe in Win8x64Pro, for example), run regedit.exe, then go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers and create String value with name C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe and value data ^ RUNASADMIN DISABLEDWM DISABLETHEMES. – Tautonym

Worked for me on Vista, 7 and now 8 (using the monstrous registry trick). Many thanks. – Monson

izogfif's regstry hack worked for we with VS 2003 on Win7. Thanks! – Dambrosio

Thanks, that works. In the German Version its called 'Visuelle Designs deaktivieren'. – Schreiner

@Tautonym it seems to setting "Adjust for best performance" and adding the regkey you're talking about fix the problem for me in Win10 – Parachronism

@Ivanzinho Try answer https://mcmap.net/q/767419/-visual-studio-net-2003-on-windows-7-hangs-on-search with reg file. If that doesn't help, please provide more details about your issue: what do you do (step-by-step, if possible)? What do you expect to happen? What happens instead? P.S.: I wish there was a chat room on stackoverflow so we can avoid spamming the comments. – Tautonym

Answer 2

You can do this by right clicking the shortcut to launch VS.NET 2003 and selecting properties, choosing the “Compatibility” sub-tab and then checking “Disable Desktop Compositing” as well as “Disable Visual Themes”

Grayson

Answer 3

I use Windows 8.1, and the path
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
is invisible and could not be created manually inside regedit.exe. So I wrote a registry file "abc.reg" with text:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\\Common7\\IDE\\devenv.exe"="^ RUNASADMIN DISABLEDWM DISABLETHEMES"

Execute it by double click icon of "abc.reg" (may be Run As "Administrator").
It works.
(The post is for your convenience in this certain case)

Syndactyl

Also confirm this works on Windows 10, v1803. You will need to maximise the window afterwards. – Buhrstone

Answer 4

I am running Windows 10 Enterprise 1909 and found global search also causes VS2003 to freeze and stop responding.

The advised registry edit did not work for me - VS2003 refuses to start up when run as admin:

A referral was returned from the server.

This is the same error I get if allowing the compatibility trouble-shooter to apply Windows XP (Service Pack 3).

I can get global search working if I remove RUNASADMIN and DISABLEDWM from the registry value (I.E. leave only DISABLETHEMES in place).

Create a registry key as follows:

• Location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers
• New: String Value
• Name: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe
• Value: ^ DISABLETHEMES

You will end up with an even uglier UI (quite an achievement in itself!) but at least global search will now work.

Tranche