just signed here and I want to greet all of you. I’m actually using KiCad 5.1.7 and I’m experiencing sudden crashes that never happened in the past. Unfortunately, I cannot remember from which version they started to appear because I usually upgrade as soon as a new version is available. But this time I will wait before upgrading to 5.1.8.
The phenomenon is very strange and I can resume it as follows:
Crashes occur using both Eeschema or PcbNew, especially when I click on the save button to save what I have done. At this point and most of the times all KiCad windows simply close themselves disppearing, but I have noticed that the save operation has succeeded. Very rarely, after a successful save and after having closed the working window (Eeschema or PcbNew), the main KiCad window hangs (application is not responding), requiring the kill of the process. But, I repeat, this is very rare, most of the time all windows simply close.
Yesterday I have noticed a very strange behaviour in board setup:
As far as I remember I have never changed the default values for “Solder mask clearance” and “Solder mask minimum width” nor I know if the values shown are the real defaults, so I have set both to zero (as suggested by the warning above the edit boxes) and when I have clicked on OK… BANG! All windows closed. I have found the two settings with a text editor and I have set them to zero. The project continues to open and to work just fine but entering again in the board setup, even doing nothing but clicking the OK button causes the crash to occur.
I have KiCad installed on two machines and the problem occurs on both of them exactly the same way. Both machines are running the latest version of Windows 10 x64 (KiCad is, of course, the x64 version).
One of the machines is a bit old, but has sufficient resources:
Core 2 Duo 6550 processor with 8 GB of RAM
RADEON 5450 video card
The other machine, from which I’m writing, is the most powerful and newest machine, assembled three years ago:
I7 K7700 with 16 GB of RAM
RADEON RX580 video card with 8 GB of DDR5 RAM
Completely removing KiCad with Revo Uninstaller to remove all remnants and reinstalling it doesn’t help.
trying to help in solving this problem, I attach a couple of errors taken from yesterday’s Windows Event log. I have found so far two kind of errors. The first is an “Unknown” error, probably when the main KiCad’s window hung, stopping to respond.
The secon kind of error is more specific and I guess that it’s the error that occurs when all KiCad windows simply close, disappearing (sorry, the system says that being a new user, I cannot post more than one image, absurd, so I copy and paste the error text; sorry, my Windows is Italian):
Nome dell’applicazione che ha generato l’errore: kicad.exe, versione: 0.0.0.0, timestamp: 0x00000000
Nome del modulo che ha generato l’errore: wxbase30u_gcc_custom.dll, versione: 3.0.5.0, timestamp: 0x00000000
Codice eccezione: 0xc0000005
Offset errore 0x0000000000154e23
ID processo che ha generato l’errore: 0x2134
Ora di avvio dell’applicazione che ha generato l’errore: 0x01d6c335addb0e03
Percorso dell’applicazione che ha generato l’errore: C:\Program Files\KiCad\bin\kicad.exe
Percorso del modulo che ha generato l’errore: C:\Program Files\KiCad\bin\wxbase30u_gcc_custom.dll
ID segnalazione: 1f3c9b92-8147-477d-97a4-c774c0e6a065
Nome completo pacchetto che ha generato l’errore:
ID applicazione relativo al pacchetto che ha generato l’errore:
As far as I remember, error 0xc0000005 should be a simply “access violation” in the dll indicated above.
I am using the latest RADEON Adrenalin drivers for the RX580 on the computer from which I’m writing just now. The other (old) computer where this defect happens, uses another old RADEON card (5450 if memory helps me) and the only usable RADEON driver is the legacy one, no more updates from years; but KiCad has always worked fine on this computer too. Unfortunately, I cannot remember exactly when it started to happen. Since I haven’t installed 5.1.8 yet, I will try later to see how it will go.
thank you, I’ve already read that post but, as I’ve written in my original post, I have tried to completely remove and reinstall KiCad to no avail. Moreover, Eeschema and PcbNew crash (more correctly: disappear) 99.9% of the times only when I click the Save button; but the schematic or pcb are correctly saved (luckily).
ok, I have installed (updated) 5.1.8 on the first computer and all seems to work properly now. I will check again in the next days to see if this problem has gone away for good.
• Running the Stand-Alone versions of PCBnew and Eeschema always crashed and closed if I did not place footprints/symbols (in other-words, if I simply opened them and closed them, Crash.
• This did not happen if running them from the Kicad Main Panel.
• In another post (here), I suggested solving slow speed of loading footprints. It turns out, the same ‘observable’ aspect part of the solution (for me) appears to also take care of this problem (can now close without adding footprints/symbols - No Crash!)
Before doing anything, I suggest running “Kicad.pro”, not PCBnew or eeschema standalone’s. The Main Panel presents PCBnew and Eeschema Icons to run them…
unfortunately, I always use the main panel; there is no reason for me to call Eeschema or PcbNew directly unless I have to. I also have the habit to run KiCad with its desktop icon, and not by clicking on a .pro file. After opening the main panel I open the project from there.
• Look at the folder contents of a Successfully opened/saved and Quit project.
What files are in the project after quitting?
Compare to a Failed project…
EDIT - Adding clarifying info:
• Open Kicad, Create a new project
• Run PCBnew from main panel
• Add a Footrpint (Just go through the motions of it but, don’t actually place it on the board or, if placing it, delete it, cancel adding it. File>Save_As_Copy (don’t rename it)
• Do same for Eeschema
Quit Kicad and look at folder contents - what are the files added?
ahh… there’s a reason I asked about permissions but didn’t go further.
An old post of mine talked about filenames and the Encoding and Kicad NOT liking any other than UTF-8. I kept having access problems… Until I fixed that (and, Don’t use graphic text characters! like bullets… etc. Keep the name unified (no spaces)
project name: Prova. The files in the folder are the usual ones:
Prova.pro
Prova.sch (no components added)
Prova.sch-bak
Prova.kicad_pcb (no footprints added)
Prova-cache.lib
fp-info-cache
Strangely, making a “Save as” without renaming in PCB triggered the overwrite confirmation request, but didn’t produce a .bak copy, that instead happened with Eeschema. A bug?
Editing projects located on Windows networks shares provided by samba servers (non-Windows Server, i.e. Synology, FreeNAS) may result in crashes due to samba generating bad file change events and our cross-platform toolkit asserting the invalid event rather than ignoring it. Windows Server hosted shares should not encounter this issue.
You will have to work on a local drive if you encounter crashes working from a network drive for now. More details can be found in GitLab Bug #5740.
Probably not a Bug, just the way coder did it. EDIT - Notice the Bak file is sch-bak… The hint is sch=eeschema and fp=footprint.
Footprints are used in PCB…
So, you discovered the files and they’re now in the folder. You should now be able to use without problems. Does it work?
If you use a Template, observe the files and ensure the two Cache files are present…
