I'm interested in studying all of the 5-dimensional representations of a certain known Lie algebra. To do this naively, I want to find all of the solutions to a large system of equations, with a few inequations (e.g., a[1,1]<>a[2,2]).  I've noticed that calling SolveTools[PolynomialSystem] gives much better performance than solve(...).  Since the original system has no equations of degree higher than 2, I suspect that whatever preprocessing that solve(...) is...

I'm working on a project that involves solving a large system of polynomial equations using 'solve', with some inequalities of the form "a<>b" or "a<>0". Initially, I was using Maple 9.5 with great success; the machine I was using was upgraded to Maple 11, and now 'solve' struggles with problems that were previously easy (<30 seconds).

Were there any major changes in 'solve' between these two versions? (No, according to the documentation; Yes, according to the source....