"Add Reference" Dialog Delays

Today I decided to reduce the impact of an annoying problem with Visual Studio--the length of time it takes to initially bring up the "Add Reference" dialog. It can take a minute! I run into this delay constantly because I seem to almost always need to add a reference to System.Configuration to every project. My approach was to create a custom project template with the reference already included. Here are the steps I took:

• Navigate to "C:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates\CSharp\Windows\1033"
• Copied the template ConsoleApplication.zip
• Navigate to My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#
• Pasted ConsoleApplication.zip
• Opened up the zip with "Open with > Compressed (zipped) folders" and dragged "consoleapplication.csproj" onto the desktop
• At line 45 added
    <Reference Include="System.Configuration" />
• Saved the proj file
• Opened up the zip with Winzip (or use 7zip) and dragged in the new version of "consoleapplication.csproj"
• Closed winzip (or 7zip)

The new project template is ready to use!

The official documentation from Microsoft is here.