Windows – Visual Studio long install/uninstall time

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In the organization that I work at, we have a number of developers who use Visual Studio 2013. I also personally use Visual Studio 2013, both at work and at home.

What gets me is just how long it takes to install Visual Studio 2010/2013. Currently my install has been going for 2 hours and 45 minutes, though this is via the web installer. A typical install onto a developer's machine in my organization generally takes 1.5-2 hours to complete, and this is regardless if the disc image is on a shared drive or on their computer.

Additionally, uninstalling is a nightmare. With the release of the Community Edition, I have decided to upgrade from Visual Studio 2010 (For which I own a license for) to Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition. The uninstall itself took over 3 hours.

So what is taking Visual Studio so long to install/uninstall? Is there anything I can do to speed up this process when we deploy it to our developer's machines?

Best Answer

Make sure assembly binding logging is disabled. It's easy to forget to turn it off after enabling it while debugging something, and it can slow down installing VS significantly.

This SO answer has details on running the log viewer and changing the settings.