2013 MEP Very Long Startup

[Anonymous]

I have a Computer in the office that has 15 to 20 min initial startup times. I came in and started my computer and program and started working before his program finished opening, and he clicked to open it before I started my computer. If for some reason he has to shut the program down it then restarts at a decent time ( a couple minutes).  We have looked into the machine , everything appears to be running well there. We have also gone in and turned off the virus check so there is no virus check running a scan as it opens.

We are at a loss, its an annoyance mostly, because everything seems to be running fine once it gets started. Are there any other options out there that we can try? Any ideas ?

[Anonymous]

This is probably not it, but something similar happened to me in the past and this was my solution. Please note that this was in an earlier version of AutoCAD (2011 maybe?) so this may have been fixed since then.

If there are files in the Recent Documents list (click on the purple A dropdown in the top left) that are in an unavailable location, AutoCAD will take forever to start up. It might be a network drive that hasn't been connected to yet, or a thumb drive that isn't plugged in, or something similar. If this is the issue you can remove the inaccessible files by editing the registry (there might be an easier way) and removing their entries there.

These next bits are pure speculation:

1) Could it be caused by something else in AutoCAD trying to load from an unavailable location (plot settings, a custom menu, or whatever).

2) Have you tried disabling the communication center / cloud stuff?

3) Make sure he's using the default template and not an edited one? You can change the STARTUP system var to 1 and it will give you the option to pick one when it's loading, then hit cancel (or select one if cancel doesn't work for you).

4) Editing the desktop shortcut? (Startup switches) and adding /nologo or forcing it to use one of the default profiles (if this has been changed). My default is:

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2013\acad.exe" /ld "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2013\AecBase.dbx" /p "AutoCAD MEP (US Imperial)" /product "MEP" /language "en-US"

 You could try changing it to something like:

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2013\acad.exe" /nologo
or
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2013\acad.exe" /nologo /nolisp

That's all I can come up with. It may or may not help, but good luck either way.

[Anonymous]

Thanks I will have him try these things and see if it makes a difference.

[Anonymous]

I was having the same problem opening my mep 2013. It was running anywhere from 20-30 mins at everyone open. I changed my recent documents to only open 1 and it opens instantly now. Thanks for the tip txath!