Visual Studio 2012 Really Slow Performance

After having VS open and working for a couple of days it starts to run like a real pig. 

I can see icons flickering and intellisense is on its knees.  Closing a small file takes a minute or two now. It keeps spawning Tasks in Task Manager which show as not responding... then slowly killing them off. 

There is some serious thrash on its window refresh... I have displayFusion util to handle the multi-monitors and its overlay icon is thrashing so I can see when the repaint event are being called.

It also seems to be spawning svchost.exe processes and WmiPrvSE.exe processes. There are a bunch of other processes that seem to be hanging around and not doing much of anything.

Reboot'en time...

UPDATE:

This situation has only gotten worse.

When I open the property page for a project its slow, but gets there... if I open the property page of the solution is shows a green "loading something" bar but never completes. (Its on the "Code Analysis Settings" item in the "Common Properties")  I can hear the disk thrashing like a million sick dragonflies.... so its probably paging something horrible through RAM and the cache. I need some solutions as its moved into the "non functional" category.  


Here are some other folks solutions

http://blog.geocortex.com/2007/12/07/slow-visual-studio-performance-solved/

I will check the solutions systematically and see what happens.

 1) C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebSiteCache....My projects are not web projects.
But the crazy thing is that folders are being created in the WebSiteCache directory for each of my projects in the solution. WTF?

2) C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Temp\Temporary ASP.NET Files\siteName.... not a web project
This folder is not being created on my machine.

3) Create a new project...mmm No. I would rather gouge out my own eyes with a plastic fork.  I have a decade of work in this project.

4) Network storage....mmmm No.  But possible...

5) Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> Edit & Continue  ....  Nope.  Did not do anything.

6) OPTIONS>ENVIRONMENT..under Visual Experience, untick “Use Hardware Graphics Acceleration If Available”  .... this is not an option in 2012... but there is something similiar. "Adjust Visual experience based on client Performance"... which when I untick that... after an initial freeze while I assume VS is cleaning itself up... the code editor is now nice and snappy.
The properties page is still choaking to death and there are nasty black borders around all the floating windows on my second monitor... can we say repaint error? Well more like a lockup.

Its doing its weird thing where it spawns lots of items in the "Applications" window and lots of  'svchost.exe' tasks...about 15 of them. (Althought I think they are spurious and not connected as they did not disapear when I ended up shutting down VS)

And now its back....

Even the property editor seems to be responsive now... whoot. Now I just have to remember what I was doing... Oh yeah editing the WIX deployment file.


UPDATE:

After a full reboot.... it took the best part of 5 minutes for VS to open this time.  Not sure what I did but it seems to have really pissed it off.

I have now unticked the "Enable rich client visual experience" and "Use hardware graphics acceleration if availible"... just for fun as it can't really make the situation worse.

Lets see what happens now...

Quite quick. Lots of ugly refresh errors on the edges of windows and some controls... but it gets the job done. The property pages open quickly. (Still can't get to the Code Analysis Settings"...Will have a coffee break and see if its loaded by then)


Now on to Uninstalling add-ins

Uninstall VSCommands.... The whole UI is much faster to boot and seems responsive to editing.  The Property Page issue is still there.  (I might just call that a bug and leave it alone) Syntax highlighting is working again. Menus are still taking 3-4 seconds to pop up.

Uninstalled UML Design Patterns for Visual Studio.....Restarts faster.  Menus feel slightly faster.

Uninstalled the Colour Theme Editor....  No more theme.  Meuns are still 3-4 seconds to open.

Uninstalled C++ Debugger Visualisers .... kinda need this so this is just a test.

Uninstalled NuGet Package Manager... still slow menus.

I am down to "Microsoft Web Developer Tools", "Visual Studio Extensions for Windows Library for Javascript" and the "WIX Toolset".  None of which have an Uninstall option in the Extensions and Updates Manager. (Found the uninstall for the Javascript one in Control Panel > Porgrams and Features" also the Wix Toolkit)

I know I had "Visual Assist X" installed but its not showing up anywhere since I applied the VS Update 1.

I have turned off the "Source Control Plugin" option in the Tools > Options > Source Control.  Did not make any appreciable difference.  ( I was not using VS for Source Control anyway.  I use SVN manually)

For whatever reason in all these tweaks, the editor is now snappy and functional.  Menu's are still a couple of seconds to open.

I'm going to install Visual Assist X again to see if I can uninstall it cleanly.

Restart and Visual Assist X( VAX) is not parsing everything and doing all manner of overheads...
Still does not show up in the add-in manager. Ok, its in the Control Panel > Programs and Features.

Run the Uninstall... restart VS... and the Whole Tomato dialog pops up... WTF?  Tells me to use the Extension Manager... which it was not in when I looked 10min ago.

Looking... Ok... its appeared in the Extension Manager.... Uninstall again. Restart again.

Hmmm... editing is snappy. The menus are still slow but seem slightly faster.

Uninstall the Javascript Library now...took its sweet time... No obvious change.

Running out of ideas beyond throwing more RAM at the machine. 

Trolling the UserVoice forums is frustrating.