KB10670 - Debugging a DK.NET application in VS2005 is very slow while doing so is quite fast in VS2003? The DK.NET is also reasonably fast outside of VS2005. Why so slow in VS2005?

This reflects an MDA related deficiency in Visual Studio 2005 which causes any API intensive application to run slow in the VS2005 development environment. The speed of the DK.NET/VS2005 compiled application is normal when it is run outside of VS2005. For more on this issue, refer to the information at the following links:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jmstall/archive/2006/01/17/pinvoke_100x_slower.aspx

http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dv_fxdebug/html/76994ee6-9fa9-4059-b813-26578d24427c.asp

GDI+ uses the API via Interop and MDA reports this, slowing down the process dramatically. It is annoying because .NET is very GDI intensive. Read more about Managed Debugging Assistants at: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d21c150d.aspx

In this material you will find instructions on how to disable MDA.

A simple – but somewhat aggressive - way to disable MDA is to tweak the registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework]
"MDA"="0"

You can restore the MDA setting by:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework]
"MDA"="1"

However, in order to debug processor intensive applications in VS2005, it is probably necessary to disable the Visual Studio hosting process as well. This option can be found on the Debug tab of the project properties.

Furthermore, debugging a semitransparent layer can be particularly slow. We suggest turning off any layer transparency upon debug time.

Created: 2006-01-11, Modified: 2007-09-18