Disable AutoUpdate - Autodesk Design Review 2011

In some cases Design Review’s AutoUpdate feature may conflict with corporate firewall settings, causing the program to open very slowly. The Autodesk Design Review 2011 Installation Guide shows Administrators how to avoid this scenario, by preventing Design Review from checking for updates at install time.

Individuals who installed Design Review 2011 that are seeing this “slow start” behavior can also prevent checking for updates, by modifying two Design Review registry keys, InitialCheck and DoNotShowAgain. Changing the value data from 0 to 1 for each of these registry keys disables the AutoUpdates feature.

 
Figure 1: Modified registry keys for Design Review 2011 disables AutoUpdate on Windows XP.

The location of these registry keys depends on the computer’s operating system. We have listed the locations for the most common OSs here:

Windows XP 32-bit
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\Design Review\Settings\AutoUpdate
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\Design Review\Settings\AutoUpdate

Windows XP 64-bit
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Wow6432Node\Autodesk\Designreview\Settings\AutoUpdate
• HKEY_CURRENR_USER\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\Design Review\Settings\AutoUpdate

Windows Vista/7 32-bit
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\Design Review\Settings\AutoUpdate
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AppDataLow\Software\Autodesk\Design Review\Settings\AutoUpdate

Windows Vista/7 64-bit
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Autodesk\Design Review\Settings\AutoUpdate
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AppDataLow\Software\Autodesk\Design Review\Settings\AutoUpdate

Note: It is recommended that you start the application at least once, else there is a good chance that the values of InitialCheck and DoNotShowAgain have not been created yet. If you decide to edit the registry prior to starting Autodesk Design Review 2010, you will have to create those keys manually.

Warning!
Problems caused by improperly editing the Windows registry could render your computer operating system unusable. Microsoft has provided a wealth of critical information you need to know about the registry in the Microsoft Knowledge Base at http://support.microsoft.com/support.
Use the Microsoft® Registry Editor only at your own risk and only after backing up the registry as well as the system.dat and user.dat files as outlined in ARTICLE-ID: Q132332 "How to Back Up the Registry" in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. Additional information about the registry is also contained in the Help topics in the Microsoft Registry Editor.

For network installs, Adminstrators can prevent Design Review 2011 from checking for updates by following the steps in the Autodesk Design Review 2011 Installation Guide.

Thank you.

Comments

[Leslie Lees]

Even after this mod, it does not produce a result that is comparable with Adobe, with is what I'm trying to get our project managers to change from.

DR takes at least 3 times longer (than Adobe)to complete an initial startup (app' only no files)not only that, but when you open files each one opens a new instance of DR.

Its no good me bleating on about the quality, when they can't be bothered to wait for it to open.

Also not many project engineers have CAD spec'ed machines so the delay they experience is even more dismal.

[Mark J]

The problem of a slow startup is also an issue we are facing. Tried the above mentioned registry fix but to no avail. Design Review 2011 still takes a long time to start. Especially when compared to Acrobat as mention in a previous post.