Visual Studio Build Very Slow

Question

This applies to both 2008 and 2010 versions (and probably earlier ones too). Also to both C++ and C# projects.

An initial build (after reboot) runs at normal speed

Answer 1

About how long is "Some time"? (eg, Hours? Days?)

It could be as simple as you've run out of RAM.. Ctrl-Shift-Esc will load the Process Monitor where you can see your memory utilization, and kill hogs. Once it's run low, your linkers will slow down trying to swap memory to disk (and Windows doesn't typically report swap overhead unless you turn on System utilization). Depending on the size of your project, Linking can use HUGE amounts of memory making tables.