Open AutoCAD faster - Diable the Digital Signature Validation Options

If you find that it takes a long time for AutoCAD or any other Autodesk application to load you may want to look at the following:

1. On your desktop, right-click on any Autodesk Icon (i.e.: AutoCAD) and pick "Enable/Disable Digital Signature Icon".
2. In the "Signature Validation Options" dialogue box, uncheck "Display digital signatures and display special icons".
3. Restart your computer.

What does this do? Well, Autodesk applications loads a shell extension which determines if a file is digitally signed by displaying a specific icon. To determine whether a file is digitally signed, the shell extension looks into each drawing file before displaying it. If a folder contains many drawings, like your template folder, it will take longer to open.

Note: If you are using AutoCAD LT, the above steps may not work. In that case, you can do the following steps:

1. Use Windows Explorer and navigate to c:\winnt\systems32 or c:\windows\system32 (depends on WIN 2000 or XP).
2. Locate the "AcSignOpt.exe" file and double-click it.
3. Uncheck the box in the middle of the dialogue box.
4. Restart your computer.

Comments

[Tom Goodman]

Hello,
I'm having trouble with acsignopt.exe. When I try to open a dwg file from explorer I get the message box you show above in your post (1-31-05)
The check box is not checked and I have restarted several times. I found the acsignopt file and it's check box was empty.
What should I do now??

Thanks

[harshvardhan shah]

hi,
Thanks RUSS.
I tried what u said, but as u said didn't get the advanced option.(i was not logged thru administrator)
But i clicked on RESTORE button & it automatically selected autocad option.

-harshvardhan

[Russ]

You can also go to the Tools->Folder Options->File types and find the DWG format. Click on the DWG Icon, then click on the Advanced Button. (I beleive you have to be an administrator to do this, other wise you will not have this option) Under the Actions box find OPEN and highlight it. Click on the Edit button. Under the Application used to perform action" you will see the code "C:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2007\acad.exe" "%1". You can add the /nologo option here to look like this "C:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2007\acad.exe" "%1" "/nologo" Click the OK then OK then OK, then you are done. Now when you click on a drawing in explorer it should not show the logo.
-russ

[Hobbes]

To make autocad load faster you can also right click and add the: /nologo
to the end of the shortcut on your desktop to prevent it from displaying when you access the program via your shortcut. BTW, this doesn't seem to affect anything when you load the program by double clicking a dwg file.