Improve Solid Edge Performance by 95% On Windows 7 By Configuring Anti-Virus

I have seen instances with customers where the anti-virus software on Windows 7 is negatively impacting Solid Edge performance.  By making a few simple anti-virus configuration changes you can greatly improve your Solid Edge open and save performance.

For one customer, saving unmanaged Solid Edge files to his local hard drive was taking 90 seconds to complete.  After making these anti-virus configuration changes the Solid Edge file saves took 5 seconds.  For another customer Insight uploads were taking 600 seconds to complete.  After the anti-virus changes, the uploads took 30 seconds.  Two real world instances where configuring anti-virus improved Solid Edge performance by a whopping 95%.

Of course it should go without saying that the changes to your anti-virus configuration outlined below need to be reviewed by your company’s IT security experts.

For both unmanaged and managed Solid Edge exclude the following folders and all files underneath:

%ProgramFiles%\Solid Edge <version #>
%APPDATA%\Unigraphics Solutions
%TEMP%

If also running Insight or Solid Edge Embedded Client  (SEEC):

All http traffic to and from the server(s) and the client

If also running SEEC and Teamcenter exclude the additional folders and all files underneath:

%USERPROFILE%\Teamcenter
%USERPROFILE%\FCCCache
%TCROOT%
%TCDATA%

The above list assumes that the software and its various options are installed to the default locations.  If you have changed any of the default locations i.e. Insight cache location etc then you will need to modify your anti-virus exclusions appropriately.

And don’t forget to make these changes where appropriate to both your clients and servers.

To be clear it is not all anti-virus software on Windows 7 that I have seen have such a dramatic impact on Solid Edge performance.  There are several anti-virus software packages that seem to more negatively impact Solid Edge performance than others but I’m not going to call those vendors out by name in this post.  Regardless, whatever anti-virus software you run, making these configurations changes should still improve your Solid Edge open and save performance to some degree.

And for those of you are experiencing overall poor Windows 7 performance as a whole, not just with Solid Edge, perhaps you should consider temporarily disabling anti-virus and testing your Windows 7 performance without anti-virus in the mix.  You might find that your anti-virus is negatively impacting your overall performance as a whole and not just with Solid Edge.

Check out my previous post on tweaking Windows 7 for improved Solid Edge and Windows 7 performance.