Super Slow Link Time

Question

I have a large C++ solution with various projects that build several libraries and two executeables. For the most part everything runs fine, but after a while the link part of the build becomes excrutiatingly slow, on the order of 10 minutes. During this time the CPU does not appear to be pegged according to process explorer. Then after some random amount of time, sometimes days, this problem will go away and the link will be back down to a few seconds. This is happening in VS2008. I remember it happeining sometimes in Vs2003, but not nearly as regularly.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

-Tom

Answer 1

Disk bound, probably.  When is the last time you defragged your disk?

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Hans Passant.

Answer 2

 

Hi Tom_Mortimer,

I am not sure what cause the slow link, here is an article which offer some hint that can help you to build faster.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/whs4y2dc.aspx

Holp it helps.

Sincerely,
Kira Qian

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Please mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark if they don't.

Answer 3

Turned out that the hard disk was going. Found piles of errors in the system logs. Replaced it, now the build is fine.

Answer 4

Thanks for the update. It's always good to know the final outcome of a problem.