Thursday, February 20, 2014

SSMS Freeze Workaround

I'm not sure if you've ever had this problem, but while quickly cutting/pasting in a SQL script using the shortcut keys (ctrl+c, ctrl+v), in rare occasions SSMS will freeze. It doesn't crash, there's no error, it doesn't explode, it just freezes - which in and of itself is no big deal, but losing the code you've written since the last save is. What makes this worse is that there's nothing autosaved (that I've ever seen), in the SQL temp folders. The only thing I could do is shut SSMS down via Task Manager (or unplug my PC out of spite). But after a little research on the interwebs (yes, this problem just happened to me again!), I discovered a way to break the freeze. That link suggests directly right-clicking the SSMS window in the Task Bar, but I found that I had to hover above it, then right-click the instance that pops up, like this:





One time this didn't work. Playing around with it, I found that when the single instance of SSMS running popped up, I right-clicked it, then selected "Restore" from the popup menu (which only appears if there is no modal popup already in SSMS), and then re-maximized it. Then the blinking cursor reappeared, and all was well.