Visual Studio 2005 sometimes seems slow starting up.

I've found that occasionally we're seeing VS startup times being very slow. In one recent case, it was the MRU files/folders (that list that shows when the File / Recent Files or File / Recent Projects has references to the files or folders that are no longer reachable (say on a disconnected network drive). All you have to do is delete the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\FileMRUList or HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\ProjectMRUList registry keys.

Another couple of hints come from Tim Noonan

If you have start-up speed issues when the Team Foundation Server is not accessible, you can add a DWORD value called AutoLoadServer under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\TeamFoundatio and set the value to 0. That way VS won't try to connect to the TFS machine on startup. You can always set the value to 1 to enable auto-reconnect. I've personally used this trick while doing the maintenance on my TFS server.

The final trick is best described by the hippie coder himself as I've never used it

Don't Automatically Get Missing Files

The next setting is to control whether or not we attempt to automatically get files from the Team Foundation Server that are missing from a solution or project.  This can be very helpful when you have files that are part of a project or solution but are generated by the build process as well as situations where you are working offline.

Add a DWORD value called DisableGetMissingFiles under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\TeamFoundation\SourceControl or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\TeamFoundation\SourceControl. Any value other than zero will disable getting files from the server automatically.

[Via Rants of a hippie coder]