Solidworks 2017 extremely slow to load

My issue was resolved by renaming the current user registry, as suggested by our VAR.

Browse to HKEY_CURRENT USER>Software>SolidWorks and rename SolidWorks to anything you like. This will force SW to create a new default SolidWorks key the next time it's launched, which will also mean you'll lose any custom settings.

S. Casale, I agree with you 100% that this is a 2017 problem.

I happened to stumble across this post and the suggestions to fix the problem and it's a good thing I did as my VAR had not been able to solve it.  I did two of the items mentioned and my problem was solved.  Now my VAR has broadcast this to his support staff to use in case they have others with the same problem.

HOWEVER (all caps is for the SWX moderators), I should not have had the problem in the first place!!!  In all my years and multiple machines of installing SWX I have never had this problem until version 2017.  My computer and everything on it is kept very clean.  I don't use social media or anything that is far from the norm.  About the only software I use is SWX and MS Office.  So why was this a problem on this computer and not my home computer or my co-worker's computer?

I also have a strange problem with a few particular assembly drawings not being able to be reopened.  My VAR has sent it to corporate, but we have nothing back from them yet.

I am very wary of SWX2017.

One example, A 15.7mb .sldasm file has taken 15 minutes to open now and the progress bar is about 1/3 finished.

With all due respect, in my opinion this needs to be kept at the top of the forum list because it's going to cost companies lots of money when they have to wait to load their business critical design files.

This should not be marked correct.

I resolved my problem by doing a complete windows and sw reinstall from ground zero.

Hard drive formated and all.

Im on win7 64bit, Sw2017 sp1

i7-6800k, quadro k4000, samsung nvme 950 pro

Thanks Steve, this solution worked for me. Loading times are back to 2016 levels and I didn't even have to mess with registry settings.

Thanks Steve, this solution works for us. We just installed SW2017 SP2.0 and it is taking forever to load models, dwgs, etc. Just unchecked "Include sub-folders" and have a working system again. Go figure.

Gord F

We had this exact same issue.  but the root cause fix for us was to UNCHECK, System Options -> External References -> "Include Sub-FoldThisers". Removing the paths from File Locations ->Reference Documents does NOT fix the issue for those of us who need those paths there.  Unchecking this new option, makes 2017 do it's old 2016 recursive search instead of dramatically increasing the open times by looking through the subfolders to find missing references.

This is the one that worked for me.

After spending hours to the SW2017 SP5, newly installed, and the loading problem, i found your answer.

Thats it, uncheck the box, and the life is fine again.

I cant understand, why this box is automatically checked.

really stupid action from SolidWorks

Great Thanks to Steven for solving that.

I have tried removing my antivirus program (Norton) completely, and I have not had the problem resolved. I have also tried all information on this forum, and nothing has helped. I am in contact with my VAR and they have not been able to help yet. Any new ideas from anyone?

Appalling. Am going to recommend missing 2017 altogether and stay with 2016-SP5. It is stable, and I am not seeing too many terminal Explorer fails which was happening with SP3 & 4. Maybe 2 per week instead of 3 per day.

I would recommend upgrading to PDM2017 as there are some excellent new features there, and it supports SW2016.

At my last company, I pursuaded them to invest in 25 new high-spec workstations as they were 7 years old, and ran some very good performance improvements tests with SW2013 on them....PDM 2015 was also much quicker.....up to 30%.

But then I upgraded to SW2015 and LO.....Solidworks had done something to try and stabilize the software which, once files were loaded, had the effect of completely negating the performance benefits of spending £50k on new workstations.

Just not acceptable.

Allan, have you tried downloading the hotfix for SP4.0? or SP4.1 (same thing), not sure if it'll help that situation, but it may be worth a shot.

I have had the same here. What I did find out was the following:

Some parts I used in my drawings (downloaded or obtained from suppliers). Contained a lot of detail, and than I mean a lot of surfaces even inside the modeled part. By removing the detail and surfaces of these parts my drawing now opens quickly again.

So maybe an option to check third party parts you have added lately, as you state it just started to load slowly.

Tried that did not help.  But it was a good try.