Visual Studio Rebuilds unmodified projects

Question

So, as the title reads, I have a VS2010 solution with ~50 projects in it right now. If I make a change to a \"top level\" project that nothing references then VS still rebui

Answer 1

I had the same issue in VS 2015.

What did the trick for me is:

1. One project was referencing itself copy in some other project bin (magic, yes). This kind of stuff could be found when switching to diagnostic build output (in build options) and then trying to build projects one by one from the top of projects hierarchy - if you see the project that rebuilds even if nothing has been changed then see it's references.
2. I've changed all "copy always" files in all projects to "copy if newer". Basically, in all .csproj files replace Always to PreserveNewest
3. Then I've disabled NTFS tunneling as described in this article with this powershell script:

New-ItemProperty "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem" -Name "MaximumTunnelEntries" -Value 0 -PropertyType "DWord"

After that I needed on rebuild and it seems working for now.