This thread seems to have gone quiet, does no-one have any ideas what might be causing my problem?
Iâm feeling partly responsible for de-railing your thread. Sorry for that.
On the other hand, you now probably have gained enough âexperienceâ to upload files here. If you zip your whole project I can have a look at it and see if it opens normally on my system.
I can also change some small things and then re-zip and upload the project to see if that changes anything on your side. This may help to narrow down a possibility of any bug in KiCad, or if it has to do anything with your library setup or something else.
There once was an old bug, see https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1814053. It still happens to me every now and then, but I can open pcbnew on second or third try. I just have got used to it.
Trying procmon as was instructed in the bug report thread is quite much work but may give some information.
When I asked this:
I meant if it shows any processor activity > 0%, not if the process name is still in the list. Of course itâs in the list if it hasnât crashed (crashing means the process doesnât exist anymore in the system, itâs different than freezing or hanging; see https://www.cyberlink.com/support/faq-content.do?id=14592).
I have made quite a few changes. Mostly trying to make the footprints smaller.
comparator3.zip (12.7 KB)
It makes no difference on the Performance tab of the task manager, the processor is still running as before.
Have you noticed the diodes are the wrong way round on the layout?
I have no trouble working with your project. Everything I do âjust worksâ as it is supposed to on my system.
When did your problems start? If it was after I edited your project in the other thread, then it may have something to do with that. For example, line endings on my Linux box are different from Windows, that may perhaps be a cause of troubles. 
Just guessing here.
If you start a new project, does your problem also occur?
Also: Until you have more experience with KiCad: Always start the Project manager first, and always start the sub programs from there. Never start Eeschema or Pcbnew directly from windows.
â 8<------ 8<------ 8<------ 8<------ 8<â
I did a bunch of cleanup things just for fun.
Did not encounter any problems.
- You used the pspice diode, which is âbig fat & Uglyâ, I changed the library reference to Device/d_alt.Spice diode also has reversed polarity (historical origin), I rotated the diodes on your PCB to better reflect the schematic. (You should always be carefull with these things, especially when you use generic components, or match schematic symbols and footprints yourself).
- The schematic had 2 different Footprints for the diodes, while they were the same on the PCB.
D1: Diode_THT:D_A-405_P7.62mm_Horizontal
D2: Diode_THT:D_DO-35_SOD27_P10.16mm_Horizontal - Changed them both to a pitch of 7.62mm.
- Drew a rectangle on the "edge.Cuts layer.
- Replaced the 4 âtextsâ near the connector with labels, Now they show up in the netnames on the PCB.
*. Replaced the âEarthâ symbol with a âGNDâ symbol. - Added âPWR_FLAGâ symbols to the schematic. It is now free of ERC errors.
- Decreased clearance for the default net class to 0.8mm. (1mm gives DRC errors).
- Moved the track on the bottom of the board up a bit to get rid of a âtrack to close to the edge of boardâ error.
- Led: Pressed e for Edit and in the âFootprint Propertiesâ set âMove and Placeâ to Free.
- No I can move the individual pads of the LEDâs apart toget rid of the DRC errors.
- Added a 100nF decoupling cap between GND and +24V. (Had to put the LM311 a bit lower on the PCB to make room).
The board is now free of DRC and ERC errors. This does not mean that the circuit itself actually works as intended.
Oops, almost forgot, here is your updated board:comparator_2020-03-21.zip (18.7 KB)
Iâve looked a bit at differences and possible causes of errors.
Your files have CRLF as line endings, while the files I saved only have LF as line endings. This is expected though and unlikely to be the cause of concern.
There is a remarkable size in difference in the âcomparator3.proâ file. Your version is 688 bytes, while the version my KiCad produces is 3600 bytes. Most of the size difference is because all layers are named in the file I saved, while this info is not in the your project file.
Your file also starts with a line with a date from 2915, while my file has the current date. I do not know enough of the internals of KiCad to know if that is significant.
In Meld the differences look like:
I downloaded you alterations. I tried various ways of loading it and sometimes it works fine but by far the majority of times it locks up on the PCB load screen.
I donât know when it started, it is possible it was after I downloaded a âfixedâ file from here.
If that is so might it be an idea to use the windows control panel to uninstal and start again?
I have noticed that when I load the Kicad control panel the last project I worked on is already in the left box, should this happen or should it be clear? Itâs as if it is not closing properly and problems in there are not clearing.
I tried to solve it by loading a new project but all the projects I tried still fail to load the pcb page every time.
I do not use Windows, and do not know if a re-install may help in your case.
If you want to try, then:
- Backup all your important projects to some safe place.
- Completely un-install inclusive any configuration files in âweird placesâ from
KiCad. - Download a fresh copy of KiCad from the 'net.
- Run a ckecksum program to verify the contents of your download.
- Install it.
- Make some new (small) projects with KiCad, and verify itâs operation.
- If all is well, continue with your projects.
EuhmâŚ
According to:
support on windows is only for versions 8.1 and 10.
According to the version info you submitted earlier you have windows 7.
I just did a check for support for windows 7 on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7and according to Wikipedia support ended in 2015. Thatâs 5 years ago.
My advise is to switch to Linux Mint.
https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
Just put it on a USB stick and boot from it. It will not change anything on your PC until you actually tell it to. If you like what you see you can install it by clicking an icon on your desktop, and then follow instructions. If you have some free room on your Windows system (I recommend at least 40GiB, but 10GiB can get you going) then you can pretty easily shrink the windows partition and create a new partition on which to install Linux Mint. The installation program for Linux Mint is very user friendly.
If you want to be âextra carefulâ with your obsolete windows, and all your own files on it, then go buy a cheap SSD. For about EUR40 you can put a brand new SSD in your PC to install Linux on. You can then temporarily remove the SSD with windows. You can also use your Bios (UEFI) to determine from which âdiskâ your computer boots.
I was *&^%$#@! with windows long ago. Now I never have to worry about an up to date OS, computers rebooting at the most unwieldy hours, or the OS changing the way it works for no apparent reason whatsoever, except apparently to annoy their customers. Itâs not really about the money. In total Iâve donated more to open source projects than Iâve paid for commercial software, inclusive my OS.
I cleared the project right out of the left screen and started a new project with a couple of components annotated and added footprints, the PCB screen came up fine when I first updated and called it but when I closed it down and opened it again the pcb screen failed as usual.
Support for windows 7 ended last month.
I have often wondered about changing to Linux. In fact I bought a linux package many years ago but never got to install it. I assume you are saying I can put linux on my machine alongside windows?
Can I swap back and forth between windows and linux, if not with a single click then by some software help?
I have plenty of room on my computer for this but how do I shrink the windows partition and create a new one?
Is it possible to run windows programs such as my 3d software repetier and cura?
I will uninstall the Kicad tomorrow and reinstall to give it another go.
KiCad works fine on Windows 7 64 bit today.
It is no longer officially supported by the developers since Microsoft abandoned the OS earlier this year.
The 32 bit versions are always under-tested as there are very few users.
That was my bug and it still happened from time to time after an upgrade to the latest 5.1.x Nightly until at least this month.
I have an unusual case, that I have to uninstall the old version first, due to my office anti-virus preventing upgrade by overwriting
When I first double click on the desktop icon, even after closing down and rebooting my computer, should the control panel load up with the last project I was working on in the left box and the project name and address in the lower right box or should they be blank?
The KiCad project manager usually remembers which project was opened last, and also keeps track of about the last 10 or so projects
I used uninstall to clear kicad off my computer. I then did a windows explorer check for kicad and deleted a few other directories and files.
I then downloaded the previous version from the website
https://kicad-downloads.s3.cern.ch/index.html?prefix=windows/stable/
version 5.1.5_2
It loaded fine and when I opened it the last project I worked on was there, a small one I had opened after the problem started.
I opened the schematic and then clicked on tools\edit PCB, it worked perfectly.
I closed the PCB screen and pressed the PCB layout editor on the main control screen, it worked perfectly.
I closed Kicad down and restarted it, now no matter which method I use it hangs up?
I am assuming there is no quick fix for this.
Would someone run me through getting linux on a usb stick and trying to run it that way?
Now I really am depressed.
I loaded the kicad onto my laptop, also a windows 7.
Opened the control panel, started a new project, clicked on the schematic in the left box and the computer hung in much the same way my desktop does when I try to open the pcb page.
Looks like I am not using Kicad unless someone can help me sort out why it is not working?
I have been trying various things to get this to work.
I managed to get it to work on the laptop and spent a few hours designing a similar circuit with an LM 358, a comparitor but with two circuits in the one chip. Everything went fine until I closed down. When I started my computer again I could not get it to work.
All my files are uploaded to a cloud storage, dropbox. Assuming it might be a timing issue I moved the files into my documents on the laptop and everything worked fine.
I did the same on the desktop and everything worked fine for a couple of loads, I am loading Kicad up, opening the PCB editor, shutting it down and loading it all up again.
Then it stopped working on the desktop and I canât get the PCB editor to load up again, it always hangs.
Could it possibly be a timing issue of some sort, i.e. the file is taking too long to load so it hangs?
I would certainly like to get to the bottom of this as I quite like Kicad but this makes it useless for me.
I went back to my laptop and now it refuses to load the PCB editor.
Just a guess, but could it be related to:
Especially some graphics cards which have known problems with opengl.
At the bottom of this page
is
Boost 1.59
On 64-bit Windows, KiCadâs usage of the boost context library is currently broken due to changes in the library. This causes pcbnew to crash on start. The only workaround is to use boost 1.56 or 1.57 which are known to work.
Do you know where this is and how I can alter it?
According to you version info above you have boost 1.71 which probably doesnât have that problem, and anyways it works for others (because others use the same installer package).
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As an aside, if you decide to try Linux, do not use this package even though you paid money for it. Many years is an eternity in Linux distro development. Go download for free an up to date version of a suitable distro like Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Mint 19.3 is a Long Term Support release as is Ubuntu 18.04. Or you might like to wait for Ubuntu 20.04.
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