Profiler for Visual Studio 2008, C++

Profiling in Visual Studio 2008 PRO

The profiler is only available in the Team System editions of Visual Studio 2008. The last version that I used that included a profiler was Visual C++ 6.0.

For Visual Studio 2005, you could try Compuware DevPartner Performance Analysis Community Edition.

Visual Studio 2008 Profiler - Instrumented produces strange results

You say "of course you are looking at Exclusive". Look at inclusive stats. In all but the simplest programs or algorithms, nearly all the time is spent in subroutines and functions, so if you've got a performance problem, it most likely consists of calls you didn't know were time-hogs.

The method I rely on is this. Assuming you are trying to find out what you could fix to make the code faster, it will find it, while not wasting your time with high-precision statistics about things that are not problems.

Does the visual studio 2008 profiler work with unmanaged C++?

Yes, it works with native code.

Do I just completely misunderstand how to use Visual Studio's 2008 profiler?

1.Do you need to have your projects built in Debug or Release to profile them?

Normally you use Release mode.

6.Can you recommend any good guides on using the VS2008 profiler?

Step 1, download ANTS Profiler.

Step 2, follow the easy to use on screen instructions.

Step 3, look at the easy to read reports.

Seriously, the Microsoft profiler is garbage compared to ANTS.

Is there any profiler like visual studio profiler that works under Virtual Machine?

I'm not sure if it helps, but the profiler in Visual Studio 2010 (Premium and Ultimate) does support profiling on virtual machines.

Also note that you can use Instrumentation Profiling with VS2008 on a virtual machine, although sample profiling is not supported.

How to Profile Unit Tests of MsTest in Visual Studio 2008?

Unfortunately Ordered Tests don't have the 'Create Performance Session' option available:

If you had a simple unit test you would be able to create a performance session.

To use command-line profiling you can navigate to \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Team Tools\Performance Tools where you will see vsperfclrenv.cmd and other tools mentioned on the profiler blog.