KiCad Freezes on Attempting to open PCB files

[Jinyu Liu]

My KiCad installation freezes on any attempt to open any pcb file, including those generated by its own template. After a while, the program shuts itself down. When this first happened I was on KiCad 5.0.0 but in my attempt to fix the problem I have updated my installation to KiCad 5.0.1-4. I had been using Kicad for a while before it happened and it worked fine. I stopped using it for a bit and when it tried to use it again today the situation mentioned above happened. My operating system is Windows 10. I do have both Python3 and Python 2 installed on my computer, but I since tried removing the path environmental variables for python that I have added and even tried uninstalling python 3. I have basically tried everything suggested in this thread: https://forum.kicad.info/t/kicad-crashes-every-time-when-opening-pcb-file/1507/39 and none of it worked. Curiously everytime KiCad hangs there is a massive spike in disk activity, this is observed everytime I tried, and failed, to open a pcb file.

Update 11/16/2018:
I continued to try to get PCBNew to work, at one point I suspected that there is something wrong with my system and reset my PC (Which is like a reinstall but keeps all personal files in place) I also tried disabling Superfetch which seemed to have fixed excessive disk utilization for everything else but KiCad. After the PC was reset I installed only Chrome and KiCad 5.0.1-4 and it still exhibited the same behavior even with Superfetch disabled. I tried installing the program on my HDD instead of my system drive which is an SSD. It still did not work but when I attempted to open a PCB File it caused 100% disk utilization on my system drive despite the fact that KiCad was installed on the second drive. I did manage to get the Linux version of Kicad working on my computer inside a VirtualBox Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS VM and it has no problem what so ever.

Thanks in advance for everyone for their time and let me know if there is any additional tests or additional information that could help in figure out this issue.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

Which version of 5.0.1 did you try? I'm not a Windows user, but I know the _4 build fixed some issues:

http://downloads.kicad-pcb.org/windows/stable/kicad-5.0.1_4-x86_64.exe

[Jinyu Liu (electronrush)]

I checked and it is, in fact, the 5.0.1-4 version of KiCad. I have even tried resetting my PC to a mostly fresh win10 installation with no additional software except Chrome and KiCad and it still did not work. I also tried installing it on my hard drive as opposed to my SSD, which is my system disk, but that did not work either. However, on trying to open PCB files the utilization of the SSD jumped to 100% despite the fact that KiCad was installed on my HDD. I have had SSD utilization problems with other applications, which is why I tried to reset my PC as I thought it might be something wrong with my system, but disabling the Superfetch service seemed to fix the 100 % disk utilization with all other programs. However, KiCad continued to freeze when opening PCB files. The only way I got Pcbnew to run on my Machine was to run the Linux version in a VirtualBox Ubuntu 18.04.1 LST VM. At this point, I have no idea why it just would not work natively on my Windows 10 machine but is fine in a VM. Thanks again for your time and let me know if there is any additional test that I can do for you to help track down the cause of this problem. I am going to add the information in this comment to the description.

[Seth Hillbrand (sethh)]

@Jinyu- Can you try two things for us?

1) Disable antivirus before starting KiCad. Don't leave this disabled but just for this test.

2) Turn off your networking before starting KiCad.

Please let us know if either of these change your experience starting KiCad.

[Jinyu Liu (electronrush)]

@Seth

Well, I disabled my network adapter and tried to open a PCB again and KiCad froze, but this time without the 100 % utilization on my system drive. I tried the test again with networking just to confirm that the 100% utilization is still reproducible but surprisingly it suddenly worked just fine. I am not sure why this is the case the last time I tried it which is less than 2 hours ago it was still freezing as described above. I tried to open PCBNew again a few times and it seemed fine. I don't know if you guys still want to look into this, but if you do I would be happy to help. Thank you for your time.

[Jinyu Liu (electronrush)]

@ Seth
FYI I don't currently have an anti-virus installed because of the whole resetting PC thing, so I didn't run your first requested test.

[Seth Hillbrand (sethh)]

Thanks for reporting back. I'm going to set this to incomplete so that it will time out if the issue doesn't return.

[NhatKhai (nhatkhai)]

I'm not sure if this is the similar bug - But I think I can reproduce it on 5.0.2 version:
1) Open a board have some routing work
2) Try to modify the board
3) Exit pcbnew, without save.
4) Close all the KiCad
5) Try open that board again.... I got hang for a long time.
6) Shutdown KiCad
7) Try open that board again, it should work this time.

Application: kicad
Version: (5.0.2)-1, release build
Libraries:
    wxWidgets 3.0.4
    libcurl/7.61.1 OpenSSL/1.1.1 (WinSSL) zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.6 libidn2/2.0.5 libpsl/0.20.2 (+libidn2/2.0.5) nghttp2/1.34.0
Platform: Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW
Build Info:
    wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8)
    Boost: 1.68.0
    OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.9.1
    Curl: 7.61.1
    Compiler: GCC 8.2.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:
    USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
    USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
    BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCC=OFF
    KICAD_SPICE=ON

[Seth Hillbrand (sethh)]

@nhatkhai- What happens between steps 4 and 5? Do you restart KiCad? Also, what is the difference between Steps 4 and 6? Are they the same procedure?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for KiCad because there has been no activity for 60 days.]