SOLIDWORKS slow start-up troubleshooting tips.

Article description:

Below are some common factors that can affect the start-up time of SOLIDWORKS® along with suggestions to help improve and/or pinpoint causes for slow start-up performance. 

Things to check if your SOLIDWORKS is working slow.

1.Loading third party add-ins on start-up. This will take additional time as these third party libraries need to be loaded in addition to the SOLIDWORKS core modules.

Suggestion:

Try turning all of the add-ins off during start-up to see if start-up time improves

2. Other running processes and services can interfere with the loading of the libraries.

Suggestion:

Run MSCONFIG to identify and eliminate all non-essential services and processes to determine if other processes are contributing to the slow start up time. It may be necessary to consult the administrator before disabling certain services. To run MSCONFIG, follow these steps:

 a. Go to 'Start' > 'Run' > type 'msconfig' and hit "Enter"

b. Go to the 'Services' tab

c. Check the box for 'Hide All Microsoft Services'

d. Clear all services except for 'SOLIDWORKS Licensing Service', 'FLEXnet Licensing Service' and  'FLEXnet Licensing Service 64' (if applicable)

e. Go to the 'Startup' tab

f. Uncheck anything that is not a Microsoft® or NVIDIA® program.

g. Click 'OK' to close the utility.

h. Restart your system. After the system is restarted there will be a prompted that you are running in a diagnostic mode. Close this window without making any changes.

3. System maintenance is needed.  The hard drive may be fragmented. Hard drive fragmentation can slow down the time it takes to load files necessary to run SOLIDWORKS. Also, temporary file locations may need to be cleaned.

Suggestion:

a) Open SOLIDWORKS Rx

b) Click on the 'System Maintenance' tab

c) Enable "Clean the SOLIDWORKS Temporary Directories”, ”Clean the Windows temp directory”, "Clean the temporary internet files" and "Run Windows Defragmenter" (Choose the operating system drive letter as well as the drive where the SOLIDWORKS installation exists).