AutoCAD 2010 – Turning off InfoCenter

I generally avoid the still-awful Autodesk discussion groups these days, but I do hop in from time to time in the vain hope of seeing some improvement. In doing so, I occasionally pick up a gem, and that happened today. I think this one deserves a wider audience, so here it is.

In AutoCAD 2010, you can disable the InfoCenter toolbar by opening the
registry, and going to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R18.0\ACAD-8001:409\InfoCenter

In that key there’s a value with the name “InfoCenterOn”.

Changing that value from 1 to 0 will disable the InfoCenter toolbar.

Source: Tony Tanzillo in this thread. Note that the “ACAD-8001” part will be different if you use a vertical variant of AutoCAD.

Why would you want to do this? To improve startup times and reduce annoyance. Autodesk should have provided a better mechanism for doing this. The absence of convenient, designed-in off switches for new features is something I’ve complained about on many occasions over the years. Autodesk’s response has been patchy.

Edit: I just noticed Owen Wengerd has posted about this, including a LISP routine to simplify the process of turning it on and off.

6 thoughts on “AutoCAD 2010 – Turning off InfoCenter

  1. daveea

    i’m beginning to think that someone could make a killing writing an application that would run right after an AutoCAD installation and disable 1/2 the changes that have been introduced since r2007. i’m not kidding.

    the most popular requests i’ve had this year (internal to our organization – 50+ users) have been:

    1. how do i disable this ribbon?

    2. how do i turn off all these annoying prompts and internet reporting functions?

    3. how do i get my AutoCAD performance speed back?

    Reply
  2. Owen Wengerd

    The problem with selling a commercial utility to disable unwanted features is that nobody thinks they should have to pay for such a tool. Given this, and the fact they would likely be in a foul mood already, they would start right out as disgruntled customers. It probably wouldn’t work well as a commercial utility, but it sure makes for good blog material!

    Reply
  3. Earl Kubaskie

    It’s been a while since I’ve ben there…

    It seems that the AU website has pulled out of the great(yeah, right) combined signup program?

    The userid I set up “back then” doesn’t work anymore. I now need to use my email addy (and of course we all LOVE that idea) but the site looks much better done than the last time I was there!

    Reply
  4. Ismael (XREF DRAFTING, INC.)

    As the typical one step forward and 2 back, this CommCenter has decreased the performance of my machines. Thanks for this, I was running out of hair to pull. Im ok with the ribbons and all, but i whish it was faster, specially the MEP 3D Drafting… Far too complex for the actual purpouse and results.

    Reply
  5. stkarma

    I was experiencing Autocad startup crashes and could not use Autocad. Autodesk tech docs said to reinstall .NET Framework. This did not resolve the issue. I finally came across a link to this blog that recommended to disable the infocenter to resolve the Autocad Unhandled e0434f4dh Exception error.
    Thanks for sharing this information. You saved the day!

    Reply

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