Description

Does Ansys crash or hang up?  Does Ansys not open at all when you launch it?  Are you getting unexpected error messages?  These symptoms can be caused by your antivirus software actively blocking Ansys while it's running, or it could have blocked certain files from being installed that are now preventing the software from running properly.

Problematic AV Software - Software we have seen interfere with Ansys.

• Norton
• McAfee
• SentinalOne
• ESET
• Cylance
• AppMoat
• Webroot
• Trend Micro (Endpoint Basecamp 2019)
• Sophos

Solution

Step #1 - Identify if AV software is the cause

1. Identify What AV Software You're Using
   1. If your computer is managed by your IT Department it's very common that, in addition to Window Defender, additional 3rd party AV software is silently running in the background without appearing in the system tray or start menu.  In this case, please contact your IT Department to determine what software is used.
   2. Optionally you can attempt to open Task manager and review the process list to try to identify what AV software is running.
2. Is your AV Software on Problematic List Above?
   1. If so, continue to Step #2 to exclude Ansys files in your AV product.
3. Review Your AV logs If Possible
   1. If possible, review your AV software logs to see if it blocked Ansys.  Unfortunately, it's very common for centrally managed AV software to block but not log or alert the user to any errors, so this is not a definitive way to rule out the software.
4. Temporarily uninstall AV software and attempt to reproduce the problem
   1. We've found that disabling the AV software rarely disables all features and you will need to completely uninstall the software temporarily so you can be confident either way.
   2. Also note, attempting to disable the software by killing the process in task manager rarely works because AV products restart themselves to prevent malicious threats from shutting down the process.
   3. Even if the problem repeats itself after your AV is uninstalled, AV may have blocked files during the installation process and you must continue to the next step before definitively ruling out AV as the cause.
5. Uninstall & Reinstall Ansys
   1. With your AV still uninstalled, perform a comprehensive uninstall and comprehensive reinstall of the software.
6. Can you Reproduce the Problem?
   • NO
     • AV was the cause.  Continue to Step #2 and work with your IT Department to add the necessary exclusions to your AV software and reinstall it on your computer.
   • YES
     • We recommend continuing to troubleshoot the problem to resolution with AV uninstalled to ensure it isn't a contributing factor of multiple problems.

Step #2 - Add Ansys Antivirus Exclusions

Ansys has literally hundreds of executable files, scripts and dll's that get utilized at different times when using Ansys (not just at startup). This list also grows as new versions are released.  As a result, it's not generally practical to exclude Ansys on a file by file basis. Instead, Ansys installation folders can be excluded from your software. The process varies by AV vendor, but the folders that need to be excluded are the same.

1. Exclude Ansys Folders
   • C:\Program Files\ANSYS Inc\
   • C:\Program Files\AnsysEM\
2. Reinstall your AV software if you uninstalled it in the steps above
3. Attempt to reproduce the problem