I need to vent a bit, about something that is actually a serious and baffling problem.

It would seem that whatever team designed PDM couldn't imagine that someone might use a computer for literally anything besides PDM. Why do I say this? When I take my work laptop home, if I forget to log out of the vault, I get endless pop up messages about being unable to contact the vault. So OK, I click the message to acknowledge it. But no...that's not good enough. It pops up again. And again. And again. Anytime I do anything in explorer. So I go to the taskbar to log-off of PDM. But the messages don't go away. Then I need to go to the local vault directory which takes a minute, while it remembers it's not connected and reminds me. Then by the time I can get to "work offline" I need to dismiss a few more pop-up warnings. The whole process can take several minutes. Each and every single time.

And now, I've gotten a new popup that essentially disables my computer. "Failed to obtain a license for Solidworks PDM Standard. Licensed number of users already reached." OK, great, I click OK and keep working on other stuff and notify the admin. But no, it pops up immediately after I close it. Forever. I tried unpinning the vault from quick access so that it wouldn't prompt this every single time I open an explorer window - but that won't work either. I can't even right click the folder to bring up a menu because the pop-up steals focus. I tried killing all Solidworks tasks and PDM tasks but they come right back. I literally CAN'T GET RID OF THIS POPUP! I now have 4 of them stacked one on top of the other. No matter what I close and how much I click "OK" it just keeps coming back. I've had to get rid of actual malware that was less annoying and disruptive than this.

So my question to the Solidworks team is: are you f***ing kidding me?? Did you figure that bombaring a team of 30 employees with incessant popups that severely interrupt their workflows (even if they aren't using Solidworks) was a good idea?

And of course, a small corollary to that question is: how do I get rid of this inane problem? I am completely unable to remove my SWA Vault from the quick access menu - so it stops creating warnings every time I use explorer - because right clicking the folder immediately launches PDM and prompts a barrage of warnings.

Here's a simple solution to this problem: When you prompt me that you can't connect to the vault, and I click "OK" or "work offline," then PDM needs to shut the hell up. ONE warning is enough! You don't need to waste everyone's time for no reason whatsoever.