Technical Solutions

Solution:

The typical reason for a slow startup is that the environment variable LM_LICENSE_FILE is either not set or it is not set optimally. This variable tells MATLAB where it can find the license information needed to startup MATLAB. When someone is using a standalone license and a network license on the same machine, they typically have LM_LICENSE_FILE set up so that it looks for the network license first, then if all licenses are checked out, it seeks the standalone license.

This usually doesn't create a problem until the person disconnects from the network. After disconnecting from the network, when MATLAB looks for the network license it takes it a while to realize that it cannot connect to the server to checkout a network license before it falls back on the standalone license.

This slow startup can also happen if you only have a standalone license for MATLAB, but have the LM_LICENSE_FILE variable set to have a license other than the MATLAB license first.

To resolve this problem please do the following:

1. Right-click on the "My Computer" icon and go to "Properties".

2. Go to the "Environment" tab

3. Look for a variable named LM_LICENSE_FILE

4. If there is an LM_LICENSE_FILE variable already in existence, skip to step 5. If there is not, create an LM_LICENSE_FILE variable by typing "LM_LICENSE_FILE" in the Variable text box and continue to step 5.

5. Set the LM_LICENSE_FILE variable to the absolute path of the MATLAB license.dat file for your node-locked PC license first. The license file should be in the $MATLAB/bin/win32 directory for R12 and higher ($MATLAB/bin for R11), where $MATLAB is the root MATLAB directory.

Note: If there is more than one license file, put a colon (:) for Unix based systems or a semi-colon (;) for Windows based systems, after the first path then type the path to the network license.dat for the pool of licenses. Click "OK".

6. Click "OK".