Bypassing 'Check for Updates' to speed up launching SolidWorks

I took a call on the helpdesk last week from a Customer reporting that SolidWorks was often slow to start first thing in the morning. A little investigation found this neat little trick to stop SolidWorks from checking (via the internet) for updates when it starts up.

When you start SolidWorks from the installed Desktop shortcut it actually fires up swspmanager.exe (SolidWorks Service Pack Manager). This in turn uses the Check For Updates portion of the Installation Manager to search the Internet database for changes to the product version. The query of the Internet may take some time, in particular if your Internet is disabled, you run firewalls, or have a slow connection. Once the database has been queried, the results are interpretted and Solidworks starts prompting you to install the updates if available.

To avoid this behavior you can create a new desktop shortcut directly to Sldworks.exe

When starting sldworks.exe directly you bypass the whole swspmanager/check for updates. The convenience of knowing if a newer update is no longer available (use Help/Check for Updates) however start up on most machines will be at minimum a few seconds quicker (on some machines the difference might be greater such as Vista/Windows 7 with User Account Control or if you have anti-virus/spyware which may block/slow down the access to the Installation Manager)

If you are not sure how to create a shortcut, it's pretty straightforward and I have included instructions for Windows7 below (note: If you look at the 'properties' of your existing shortcut it will show you where you have installed SolidWorks on your computer, and therefore where to find Sldworks.exe)

Create a Desktop Shortcut in Windows 7

1. Right-click on your Windows 7 Desktop. This will bring up a menu.
2. Hover over the the "New" option, and then click on "Shortcut." This will bring up the "Create Shortcut" wizard.
3. Click on the "Browse" button and navigate to the program you want to have a shortcut. Click on the program and then on the "OK" button. This will bring you back to the "Create Shortcut" wizard with the location of the program entered. Click on the "Next" button.
4. Type in the name you would like the shortcut to have and click the "Finish" button. I hope you find this tip useful Wayne Marshall Customer Support Manager

Hopefully you found this tip useful.

Kind regards

Wayne

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Wayne Marshall | Customer Support Manager / PDM Product Manager
Solid Solutions Management Limited