Missing library path in Footprint Editor

Hello, everyone,
I have a problem with the footprint editor, at a certain moment I can no longer display the footprint path ‘Show Footprint Tree’, it remains completely empty, attached is the picture of the malfunction.
Thank you in advance to anyone who can help me.

I have already tried uninstalling and re-installing Kicad without solving the problem.
I am using version 8.0.4 for Windows

Thank you
Antonio

Your screen grab/snip is too small to see . . .

When you uninstall and re-install your configuration data are not changed.
But my knowledge about it may be that of V4 and V5. I think, I remember, but I’m not sure that latest versions were un-installed asked if I want to un-install also my configuration.

If you have already un-installed and installed than probably there is no problem in exe files.
If you want to start KiCad as it was first time installed then rename C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\kicad directory.


This is the biggest picture, I hope it is understandable
Thanks
Antonio

Dear Piotr,
I do not have the path you mentioned, during uninstallation kicad asks for the files to be removed.
thanks
Antonio

As you have Windows - replace YourUserName with User name you use and you certainly have this path, but it is probably system or hidden.
I am using FreeCommander as my file manager. For example I like with one click to have my footprint library directory opened in left panel and KiCad footprint library opened in right panel to then find footprints to copy from KiCad libraries to my library.
In FreeCommander in (translating from Polish) View-Show menu I have Show hidden elements and Show system elements switched on.

Sorry I needed to click on the image, then it was large enough.

What do you have here:

image

Available path substitutions ?

This has absolutely nothing to do with managing the footprint libraries.
First clipping all the white of the picture (Where is that coming from?) and then magnifying the remainer a bit shows:

Comparing with a screenshot on my Linux box (Fonts and GUI items are rendered a bit differently)

image

But overall, it is clear that the GUI does not render properly. There are white rectangles in strange places, there is also a small vertical white stripe in the Item text, and the scroll bars also look strange.

What happens if you drag the width of the search tree panel? (Indicated with red).

Renaming your whole KiCad configuration directory as Piotr suggests, is also something you should try. But it’s location depends on the OS you have. On Linux it is in: ~/.local/share/kicad/8.0
If you rename this whole directory and then start KiCad, then it assumes it is freshly installed and it creates a new configuration directory. If you save the old one by renaming it instead of deleting it, then you can use it later to try to find differences or copy settings.

Also, as this is bug related, copy the full KiCad version information from: Help / About KiCad / Copy Version Info and paste it here in a post. This version info is about 20 lines long and looks like:

Application: KiCad x86_64 on x86_64

Version: 8.0.4-8.0.4-0~ubuntu20.04.1, release build

Libraries:
	wxWidgets 3.2.2
	FreeType 2.10.1
	HarfBuzz 2.6.4
	FontConfig 2.13.1
	libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3

Platform: Linux Mint 20.3, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, X11, xfce, x11
OpenGL: AMD, AMD RENOIR (DRM 3.42.0, 5.15.0-117-generic, LLVM 12.0.0), 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 21.2.6

Build Info:
	Date: Jul 17 2024 01:37:21
	wxWidgets: 3.2.1 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
	Boost: 1.71.0
	OCC: 7.6.3
	Curl: 7.68.0
	ngspice: 42
	Compiler: GCC 9.4.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:

It is why I just write how it is in Windows.

Oops, missed that, but why then:

Recently I’ve heard that windows has some kind of complicated thing where programs are not always installed where you install them. Some kind of container stuff apparently as an anti malware feature. Maybe that is interfering with KiCad.

Windows hides many things from its users and many Windows users don’t knows that except what they see there are also files and directories hidden from them.
There is close to 100% chance that this directory exists but OP just don’t see it as system hides it from him.

I’m not Windows expert. Until it don’t disturb me I’m happy to not know anything about it.

Hi,
thank you for your support, I managed to solve the problem.
I uninstalled Kicad being careful to tick the option to delete the old settings, in my case Kicad 7, re-installing the software with the default mode.
Thanks again to all of you.
Antonio

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