ANTS Performance Profiler
Latest version: 7.4
Notes & articles
Release notes - version 6
Version 6.3 – 12 July, 2011
This version fixes a number of minor bugs present in version 6.2.
As of this version, profiling with Silverlight 5 beta is supported. Although full support for Sharepoint 2010 is not built into this version, a workaround may allow you to profile managed code running on a Sharepoint 2010 server with IIS 7. For details, see Profiling Sharepoint 2010.
Please note that ANTS Performance Profiler 6.3 does not support Windows Phone 7.
Version 6.2 – 9 February, 2011
This version removes a dependency on the Microsoft J# runtime, thereby making installation both quicker and more reliable.
A number of other minor bug fixes are also included.
Please note that ANTS Performance Profiler 6.2 does not support SharePoint 2010 or Windows Phone 7.
Version 6.1 – 4 November, 2010
This version fixes a number of bugs present in version 6.0. In particular, the following issues present in version 6.0 have been fixed:
- On Windows Vista (32 bit), if you are profiling Windows Services or websites on IIS, you may have to run ANTS Performance Profiler as an administrator.
- If you have Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista or later, it is not possible to profile websites on IIS.
SQL and File I/O profiling is easier to use.
Please note that ANTS Performance Profiler 6.0 and 6.1 do not support SharePoint 2010 or Windows Phone 7.
Version 6.0 – 23 June, 2010
Features, Enhancements and Bug Fixes
This release of ANTS adds full support for profiling applications running under .NET 4 and Silverlight. It also adds a new very low overhead profiling mode, the ability to visualise when a method was active on the timeline and a command line tool.
Users running Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 or later operating systems will also be able to record and analyse SQL and File I/O activity associated with their target application, as well as attach the profiler to running .NET 4 processes without restarting them.
It also includes the vastly improved IIS support, along with XBAP support, that we first shipped with ANTS Profiler 4.3.
ANTS Memory Profiler 5, also available from www.red-gate.com, is our new, completely rewritten memory profiler offering incredible performance and an unparalleled feature set.
Supported .NET Framework Versions
- 1.1
- 2.0
- 3.0
- 3.5
- 4.0
- Silverlight 4
The .NET 2.0 runtime must be installed in order for ANTS Performance Profiler to run.
Supported OS Versions
- Windows XP SP2 or later
- Windows Server 2003
- Windows Vista
- Windows Server 2008
- Windows 7
- Windows Server 2008 R2
Supports 32-bit and 64-bit versions of all listed OSs. Windows 2000 is no longer supported.
The following feature requires the .NET 4.0 runtime and Windows Vista or later:
- Attach to process
The following features require Windows Vista or later:
- File I/O counters
- SQL counters
The following feature requires the .NET 2.0 runtime or later:
- Sampled timings
Supported Visual Studio Versions
The following versions of Microsoft Visual Studio are supported by the ANTS Performance Profiler 6 add-in:
- Visual Studio 2005
- Visual Studio 2008
- Visual Studio 2010
System Requirements
- 512MB RAM (minimum)
- 1GB free hard disk space for profiler results
Known Issues
Line-level timings are not available for Silverlight applications.
Some cheaper motherboards have an issue with their high performance timer where it can jump backwards or forwards in time by significant periods. This can cause anomalous results to appear in ANTS Performance Profiler 6 because it relies on that timer to accurately measure application performance. If you experience this issue you should upgrade your motherboard drivers to the latest version.
A limitation in Windows means that it is not possible to successfully attach to a .NET 4 process more than once.
On Windows Vista (32 bit), if you are profiling Windows Services or websites on IIS, you may have to run ANTS Performance Profiler as an administrator.
If you have Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista or later, it is not possible to profile websites on IIS.
On Windows Vista and Windows 7, after profiling IIS using attach to process, ANTS Performance Profiler 6 sometimes cannot stop the session. If this happens, restart ANTS Performance Profiler before starting a new profiling session.
In some cases, Windows Services do not restart properly after profiling.
To profile an XBAP application, Internet Explorer must be set as your default browser and it must be closed before profiling.Custom event markers are not available when profiling Silverlight applications.
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ANTS Performance Profiler
- Installation error 5100 when installing ANTS Performance Profiler and ANTS Memory Profiler
- Attach to process unavailable with some anti-virus software
- Memory leaks observed when profiling Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) applications
- Log files
- The manifest for the SQL server event source did not match the generated events. Some SQL events may report incorrect data. To fix this issue, consider recompiling etwcls.mof
- Setting file I/O and child process profiling in high DPI modes
- HTTP request timings in IIS
- Profiling web services in IIS Express
- Method not found: 'UInt32 <Module>._ANTS_Begin_Sql(System.String)'
- Enabling line-level timings for SecurityTransparent code
- Profiling SharePoint 2010 in v6.0 - 6.3
- Profiling SharePoint subsites
- Problems synchronizing results
- Windows service profiling fails if the service uses a system account
- Profiling assemblies protected with DeployLx
- The type initializer for 'y.layout.hierarchic.ClassicLayerSequencer' threw an exception
- Forcing your application to use .NET 4
- Double hit counts occurring on one line
- System.EntryPointNotFoundException (Versions: 3,4 only)
- Methods in (ASCX) web controls may not appear
- Failed to CoCreate Profiler error profiling a Windows service
- Multiple-core portable computers may show inflated times (version 3)
- No .NET methods were profiled on web application
- ANTS Profiler code instrumentation method
- Add-in fails to load when using RunAs to start Visual Studio as another user
- Profiling unit tests using Nunit
- Can I profile Compact Framework applications?
- Profiling a SharePoint 2007 Web Part
- Profiling an assembly in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC)
- Profiling IIS web applications that need to run under the SYSTEM account
- Profiling a web application hosted in IIS on a fixed TCP port
- Profiling client-side XBAP .NET applications
- ANTS Profiler prompts for location of source code which is not your own source code
- ANTS menu remains in Visual Studio after uninstall of ANTS Profiler
- Profiling a web application needing to run as the Network Service account
- Cannot start COM+ application via Remote Desktop
- Finding the overall time taken to execute a thread
- Profiling BizTalk applications
- Profiling Microsoft Office managed-code add-ins
- The system cannot find the file specified
- Error Stopping IISAdmin profiling IIS web application on Windows XP
- Creating a global debugging symbols (PDB) directory
- Using the add-in to profile solutions containing more than one project
- Methods may be missing on multi-core systems in version 3
- ASP .NET 1.x application recycling causing incomplete results
- Application recycling causes incomplete results and other errors when profiling ASP .NET
- (version 5) Support for profiling Silverlight applications
- Couldn't open metabase error when profiling ASP .NET hosted in IIS
- Failed to coCreate Profiler on ASP .NET web application
- HTTP error 404.17 profiling ASP .NET 1.1 on IIS 7
- Performance counters missing from results
- Isolating single ASP .NET pages in ANTS Profiler results
- Missing hits for lines in the source code view
- ANTS Profiler restarts IIS
- Showing the amount of time taken for a method in one particular thread
- Please specify a valid URL message profiling ASP .NET
- Times on individual lines do not add up to method time
- Explanation of "thread blocked" methods in ANTS Profiler
- Call graph percentages do not add up exactly
- Operation could destabilize the runtime error profiling ASP .NET
- IIS ceases to work after profiling web applications
- Problems with ANTS Visual Studio integration
- ANTS Profiler has been split into two distinct programs
- Windows Installer errors 1603 and 2738 occurring during installation
- Times in source code window are greater than the times showing in the method grid or tree view
- Problems with ANTS Performance Profiler Visual Studio integration
- Profiling ClickOnce applications deployed to IIS
- Could not enable tracing due to error code 112
- AjaxControlToolkit incompatibility causing application being profiled to crash
- Could not enable tracing because SQL Express is installed
- ANTS Performance Profiler menu items not showing in Visual Studio 2010
- Profiler stopping while profiling an in-browser Silverlight application
- "No Disk" error occurring while profiling application
- IE error "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" when profiling a website
- Profiler failing to connect to the server when profiling web applications
all products
- Some Red Gate products identified as containing a trojan by Anti-Virus software
- Activation may fail with Unknown Error -1
- Product uses web help although a CHM file is available locally
- Argument exception resulting from missing environment variable
- Check for updates may fail when used through proxies
- 'Unidentified Publisher' error when repairing or uninstalling
- Licensing activates product as standard edition
- Moving Red Gate software products to another machine
- Red Gate tools log locations
- The application UI opening slowly when there is no internet access
ANTS Performance Profiler
- Activating your products
- Activating your products
- Interpreting unexpected profiling results
- Choosing a profiling mode in ANTS Performance Profiler 6
- ANTS Performance Profiler 7 release notes - version 7.xx
all products
- Red Gate product acknowledgements
- Activating your products
- Activating your products
- Red Gate bundle history
- Check for updates
- Troubleshooting Check for Updates errors
- Current versions
- Deactivating your products
- Installing Red Gate products from the .msi file
- Requesting additional activations
- Serial numbers for bundles
- Reactivating using a different serial number
- Extending your trial
- Finding your serial numbers
- Moving a serial number from one computer to another
- No response received for manual activation
- Licensing and activation resources
- Licensing and activation resources
- Troubleshooting licensing and activation errors
- Licensing and activation FAQs
- Red Gate tools log file locations
- Download old versions of products
- Download product prerequisites & utilities
- Support & upgrades
- Upgrading your software
- Upgrading FAQs
ANTS Performance Profiler
- Worked example: Profiling an ASP.NET application - ANTS Performance Profiler
- Worked example: Profiling from the command line - ANTS Performance Profiler
- Worked example: Profiling performance of an algorithm - ANTS Performance Profiler
- Worked example: Profiling network overheads - ANTS Performance Profiler

Using ANTS Performance Profiler