Tips For Boosting .NET WinForm Performance

In this MSDN article, tips were suggested for boosting .NET WinForm Performance and I summarized as follows.

1. Load fewer modules at startup
2. Precompile assemblies using NGen
3. Place strong-named assemblies in the GAC
4. Avoid base address collisions
   • dumpbin can check the preferred base address of Dlls.
5. Avoid blocking on the UI thread
6. Perform lazy processing
   • Some operations can be implemented in the Idle event and will be processed when applications are idle.
7. Populate controls more quickly
   • The following code snippet shows how to avoid constant repainting.
     

     listView1.BeginUpdate();
     for(int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
     {
     ListViewItem listItem = new ListViewItem("Item"+i.ToString() );
     listView1.Items.Add(listItem);
     }
     listView1.EndUpdate();

8. Exercise more control over data binding
   • BindingSource can help improve performance.
     

     this.bindingSource1.SuspendBinding();
     for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
     {
     tbl.Rows[0][0] = "suspend row " + i.ToString();
     }
     this.bindingSource1.ResumeBinding();

9. Reduce repainting
   • Use SuspendLayout method whenever possible to minimize the number of Layout events.
   • Call Invalidate method and pass the area that needs to be repainted as an argument to Invalidate.
     
10. Use double buffering
11. Manage memory usage
    • If controls are added and removed from WinForm dynamically, call Dispose on them. Otherwise, extra unwanted handles would be accumulated in the process.
      
12. Use reflection wisely