Patch for VS 2010 Find and Replace Dialog Growing

One of the top reported Microsoft Connect issues with VS 2010 has been an issue with the Find and Replace dialog – which grows 16px each time you use it (which is pretty annoying).

The Visual Studio team recently released a patch that fixes this issue. You can download and apply it here.

Hope this helps,

Scott

P.S. A few people reported issues installing the patch if they had an older version of the Silverlight 4 tools installed.  If you see an error message that says you need an update to Visual Studio to support Silverlight 4, you can fix it by installing the latest Silverlight 4 tools release.

40 Comments

  • This patch makes me VERY happy!

  • I just applied the patch, but the issue continues :(. Maybe a reboot is in order?

  • Finally I don't have to restart so often!

  • It works fine for me.

  • It was so annoying and now it works fine :)

    Thanks Scott,

  • Excellent news .. installed. It was more than "pretty" annoying :)

  • This issue never happen to me. And I use a lot Find And Replace because I've been worked with javascript and VS2010 doesn't has a Go To Definition in this kind of file.

  • Thanks for mentioning this, Scott. The patch seems to have worked for me - the dialog now remembers the size I left it at. It had previously been coming up wider than my whole display, and I'd have to then resize it way down to make it usable. This was probably the only VS2010 bug I'd been coming across on a regular basis, and now it's dead. Yay!

  • Yeah, that was an annoying one indeed.

  • Scott,

    This is the 2nd patch I am aware of. The first being one to fix the designer crash issue.

    Surely Microsoft should be issueing automatic patches via windows update for their premium development environment.

    One patch is available on codeplex.
    2nd patch is available on connect.microsoft.com

    Microsoft is not even consistant about where to find the patches.

    How many patches are now available for VS2010?

  • Can Visual Studio team add shortkeys for "move selected lines up/down" operation in next path?

  • THANK GOD.

    That is all.

  • I'm happy to have this fix. I'd be far happier, though, if VSTS didn't crash on me one to three times per day due to low virtual memory AFTER applying the designer fix. That's a tad more annoying than having to resize the Find dialog.

  • Error downloading the patch.

    Caught error in File Transfer Process of type 'VaultFSError', error text is:
    Module: CFileTransferIsapi.cpp, Line#: 2200 Context Text: System Error: 53, returned from CFileTransferIsapi::DownloadFileBytes attempting to open file:\\DBDSSANDFS\DSVault\LUN_05\Taranna\6691FD32-1170-4C88-BF63-74D3FCE63D00, handle = 0x0 Library Text: Src=W32 The network path was not found.

  • That bug was quite the nuisance. Thanks for the heads up on this patch. It worked like a charm.

    Also, I agree with TheLudditeDeveloper. I would prefer if these patches came down through Microsoft/Windows Update.

  • @john,

    >>>>>>> I just applied the patch, but the issue continues :(. Maybe a reboot is in order?

    Send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) if you are still having problems and we can have someone help out.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • If I go to Help -> Check for Updates it sends me to Windows Update, however Windows Update doesn't list any updates for VS. So what's the "official" way of updating VS? Thanks.

  • @Ludditte,

    >>>>>>>>> This is the 2nd patch I am aware of. The first being one to fix the designer crash issue....How many patches are now available for VS2010?

    Patches are things that we produce as separate installable items - since people sometimes want to only install one patch or another. We then roll up multiple patches into Service Packs and what we call GDRs (which are sort of like mini-SPs).

    >>>>>>>>> Surely Microsoft should be issueing automatic patches via windows update for their premium development environment.

    Only Windows patches can be distributed via Windows Update - and since Visual Studio is not part of Windows we can't use Windows Update for that (.NET is part of Windows - which is why we distribute .NET patches via Windows Update).

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • @build_your_web,

    >>>>>>>>> Can Visual Studio team add shortkeys for "move selected lines up/down" operation in next path?

    You can actually do this today with the VS 2010 Productivity Power Extensions. I blogged about this feature here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/08/04/some-nice-code-editor-features-provided-by-the-vs-2010-power-tool-extensions.aspx

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • @Martin,

    >>>>>>>>> I'm happy to have this fix. I'd be far happier, though, if VSTS didn't crash on me one to three times per day due to low virtual memory AFTER applying the designer fix. That's a tad more annoying than having to resize the Find dialog.

    Can you send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) and I will loop you in with someone who can help investigate. You shouldn't be seeing crashes like that, and I'd like to make sure we understand why you are encountering them.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • @Consulting,

    >>>>>>>> Caught error in File Transfer Process of type 'VaultFSError', error text is: Module: CFileTransferIsapi.cpp, Line#: 2200 Context Text: System Error: 53, returned from CFileTransferIsapi::DownloadFileBytes attempting to open file:\\DBDSSANDFS\DSVault\LUN_05\Taranna\6691FD32-1170-4C88-BF63-74D3FCE63D00, handle = 0x0 Library Text: Src=W32 The network path was not found.

    Can you try it again and let me know via email (scottgu@microsoft.com) if you still have problems? I can then help you if you still are.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Just after installing this a colleague pointed out his work around of docking the Find dialog on the Right with the Solution Explorer and Properties dialog.

    Even though it was a workaround - I've changed mine to that and it's a great place for it.

  • @Scott

    "Only Windows patches can be distributed via Windows Update - and since Visual Studio is not part of Windows we can't use Windows Update for that"

    Microsoft Office is not part of Windows either, but they roll their updates just fine via WU.

    https://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/windowsupdate/learn/windowsvista.mspx

    As Ludditte mentioned, the problem is that there's no central location for us to fish out these patches; if there is please let us know. Thanks.

  • >>>>Only Windows patches can be distributed via Windows Update - and since Visual Studio is not part of Windows we can't use Windows Update for that (.NET is part of Windows - which is why we distribute .NET patches via Windows Update).

    Isn't it Microsoft Update?

    On Windows XP I see an entry for developer tools, runtimes and redistributables. Don't remember seeing an update through it though.

  • Scott,

    Of course, after I wrote that, today was the first day in a while where I had no crash.

    I suspect I'm dealing with a known issue. When I get the crash, roughly half the time I get a MessageBox saying the crash is likely due to low VM, and asking if I want to help diagnose it. When I click Yes, it takes me to a web site that describes related problems. The gist (as I recall) was that these problems were only likely on 32-bit machines (yep, that's what the company provides) doing work with Team System features (I'm probably the biggest user of Work Items and related features in the company).

    I assumed that I'm pushing the limits for a 32-bit machine, and that the fact that there's a diagnostic link just for this means you're working on it already as fast as you can (but not fast enough for impatient customers like me!). But next time I see it, I'll email you and see if I can grab any diagnostics.

    Thanks!

  • Vitor,

    "This issue never happen to me."

    At my company, what we found was that only XP machines saw the problem. Win7 machines never did. Unfortunately, due to a dependence on a 3rd party control, most of the dev team is still on XP.

    And yes, it's painful to go back to XP.

  • @pbz,

    >>>>>>> Microsoft Office is not part of Windows either, but they roll their updates just fine via WU.

    Office actually rolls out their patches using Microsoft Update (not Windows Update). The mechanisms are different - you need to enroll in Microsoft Update explicitly to get it.

    Having said all that - we do need to do a better job of having a single place where people can find/install VS patches. I sent mail to the VS team today asking about this and hopefully someone will follow-up.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • @Martin,

    >>>>>>>> Of course, after I wrote that, today was the first day in a while where I had no crash. I suspect I'm dealing with a known issue. When I get the crash, roughly half the time I get a MessageBox saying the crash is likely due to low VM, and asking if I want to help diagnose it. When I click Yes, it takes me to a web site that describes related problems. The gist (as I recall) was that these problems were only likely on 32-bit machines (yep, that's what the company provides) doing work with Team System features (I'm probably the biggest user of Work Items and related features in the company). I assumed that I'm pushing the limits for a 32-bit machine, and that the fact that there's a diagnostic link just for this means you're working on it already as fast as you can (but not fast enough for impatient customers like me!). But next time I see it, I'll email you and see if I can grab any diagnostics.

    If you are seeing that dialog then it probably does mean that you might be running into VM exhaustion issues. Do you have any extensions/plugins loaded? We've found that those sometimes reserve additional VM which can push you over the limit (which on a 32-bit OS is about 1.5GB before you become unstable). Note that this doesn't mean you are using all of that memory - just that something has reserved a big enough block of memory. If you can run VS on a 64-bit Windows OS then you might not see this anymore - since on a 64-bit OS the VM for 32-bit processes is still bigger (even though the apps are 32-bit) - which prevents you from running into this issue.

    If you do see it again send me email and we can have someone help explain how to get a memory dump to see what is reserving the memory in the process and help fix it.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Thanks.

    One problem also.
    VS Options window is not resizable. It's not convenient on the large monitors.

  • I get the following message when trying to download from the posted link:

    "The system has encountered an unexpected error. We apologize for the inconvenience. The issue will be addressed as quickly as possible.

    If this error continues, click the Help link at the top of the page to report the issue and include this error ID in your e-mail: d9fedaef-55b5-41ab-9591-773bf465dc3d"

  • Great, I just installed that patch, and immediately my Visual Studio died with this messages:
    Your Microsoft Visual Studio evaluation period has expired.
    I would really appreciate any warning before. Now I am going to download crack, keygen, or something else because I have to work today, no time to reinstall computer or buy a new licence now. Thank you.

  • Thanks.

  • Wow, that would be *great* if Microsoft Update included these patches.

  • Great this issue has been solved I was using dual monitors and what a pain!

  • @mare,

    >>>>>>> If this was an annoying issue what would you say about the EF designer issue about StoreGeneratedPattern, which still hasn't been resolved? Maybe Scott you can help us out and kick someone in the butt to get the job done because this issue is what makes EF adoption to halt in many dev teams?
    connect.microsoft.com/.../storegeneratedpattern-property-in-ado-net-entity-model-designer-sets-cdsl-annotation-but-not-ssdl-attribute

    I followed up with the EF team and they said the bug is fixed for SP1. If you need to have a fix for it sooner please send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) and I can loop you in with the data team to see how we can get you a patch.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Have been calling this Find/Replace bug "Pinocchio mode", his pixles grow each time he finds.

  • It worked for me but I think it introduced another issue - now the error window appears to be the same size as the solution explorer. If I resize the error list window to be bigger, then I close it and open the solution explorer, that window also get resized.


  • Great! Now I have to install Microsoft File Transfer Manager just to download a 4.6 MB patch! Why can't you link to the exe directly?

  • @Jay: no you don't need to, just click on "Download" in the "Single File" column.

  • Hmm, finally got around to trying this. I can confirm the dialog no longer grows horizontally. But now, whenever it opens, half of it is clipped by the bottom of the screen. /sigh

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