pcbnew hangs when it starts up. I had 5.0.2 running fine, but it started hanging 2 days ago. I’ve since downloaded and installed the previous 2 nightlies and 5.0.1-4. All of them exhibit the same issues.
kicad starts fine, and Eeschema seem to work as expected. When pcbnew is started (either through eeschema or command line), then eeschema also hangs. I’ve rebooted multiple times and reinstalled multiple times.
Has anyone seen this issue or do you have any idea how to triage the problem?
The fact that kicad suddenly started to hang without it itself being change could indicate that the problem is somewhere else.
My guess would be that a driver or windows update went wrong enough for kicad do no longer function. One option would be a damaged graphics driver that does not play well with the open gl requirements of kicad.
One could try and use fallback mode of kicad if this is the case. If you can get pcb_new up far enough to select fallback then this is an option. Otherwise we might need to edit the settings files or revert back to factory settings.
And a heads up: reinstalling kicad does not put it back into factory settings. The settings live in your personal profile and are not touched by the installer. Meaning if the source of the problem is a particular setting then re-installing will not solve it.
The kicad settings are stored in text files found in C:\Users\ …\AppData\Roaming\kicad (one quick test would be to copy this full directory to a different name as backup and delete the original. This will put kicad into its default settings. Including fallback mode.) Make sure kicad is closed while you do any manual changes to these files.
Unfortunately there seems to be no cure if that’s the case. You can add relevant, exact and in-depth information to the bug report, but please read all the report comments until the end and try to use the tools which might give more info.
Rene’, Thanks! By moving the configuration directory, I was able to get pcbnew to startup. I didn’t do anything special in pcbnew. I’ve updated the bug with the configuration files and repro steps. I don’t know if that helps, but hopefully it doesn’t hurt.
Hardware acceleration is enabled, but it doesn’t seem to matter because I can restart Kicad & pcbnew multiple times. Something about the repro steps that causes the issue.