Comment 9 for bug 1740022

I encountered this problem very long time ago, long before sym-lib-table, may be even in the stable version. Since then I have always made sure to untick "Environment variables" during install, and it has worked for me ever since. Why add them during install if you know you are not going to use the standard paths?

In a Win7 VM where that previously worked (and no previous system environment variables), I just did a test install of the last windows nightly (2017-12-24 revision 570866557) with the "Environment variables" ticked to on, and can confirm that this is what creates the behavior described above (I also have all the official libraries under in my home folder tree). There are however signs in the custom path setup dialog where the overridden paths become dark gray, and when I exit the dialog there is a warning message about the paths have been defined externally an may be temporarily overwritten. So KiCad is sort of honest about it.

I tried a reinstall (without uninstall) with this option ticked off again but the environment variables seem to still stick even after a reboot of the VM and copying back a backup of the ~\Appdata\Roaming\KiCad folder. Even a full uninstall and reinstall without the environment variables on did not fix it. I had to uninstall, go into the registry and search for "C:\Program Files\KiCad\share" and delete them under Session management - Environment, and then reboot before reinstall.

This is problematic, because users will have a hard time recovering from environment variables installed by accident.

Also since this is a recurring problem for users who use custom paths (second bug report mentioning it in a short time and me commenting on it), perhaps something should be done to it or to documentation during install. At least some instructions should be available on how to unintall the system environment variables (maybe it is?, I have not checked the wiki).

Perhaps it would be better if the system environment variables are not installed at all, but if the installer found that the standard custom paths were empty, it would fill in the standard paths with the default paths under C:\Program Files\KiCad\share (or whatever the location would be on the system).