ltspice

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ed
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#1 ltspice

Post by ed »

yesterday I had a bit of a fight with ltspice(xvii)...

after ignoring the 'there is an update available' message for a couple of years I finally gave in and pressed the update button.

all started well and it seemed to be uploading many gz cabs one at a time. After about 10 mins I looked and progress was 7%. I looked again after another 10 mins and progress was at 9%........mmm something wrong. After another 10 mins there was little progress so I abandoned the update, completely uninstalled and downloaded a new version.

I had to abandon because the update was putting message windows up that couldn’t be minimised and retained focus(couldn’t have anything in front/on top of them).

The new version installed in about 4 mins with no problems...except the first time I used it the message appeared 'it's 104 days since you updated , do you wish to update now'. Like a fool I selected to check the update…well it went through the check routines and then declared ‘unable to update the changelog.txt.

All well and good…it makes great mention of always doing updates with admin priv, which in my case was automatic cos my account is admin……but.. I am assuming the changelog problem occurred because the program was not running in admin mode, even though the account was an admin account.

As far as I can see there are a couple of unexplaineds here:

If ltspice has to be run in admin mode, surely they should say so?….
And
How did a program that hogs the desktop and holds focus ever get by qc?

Anybody else experienced any of this?
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jack
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#2 Re: ltspice

Post by jack »

No

But there again, even admin accounts don't run programs with admin by default - you just have the ability to do that should you wish.

i.e. when running ltspice for an update, explicitly run it as admin.
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#3 Re: ltspice

Post by Mike H »

Ah, version XVII ? I was on the Yahoo LTspice group for some while (until Yahoo stopped having Yahoo groups - can't remember where they went after that) - endless complaints about XVII - can't do this, can't do that - concensus, do not touch with a long pole. Mine is still LTspice IV (2009) literally haven't updated for years and not going to. :(
 
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#4 Re: ltspice

Post by jack »

I've used XVII for years with absolutely no problems at all, including using it for complex models of my own design.

I sometimes think the reported issues are more to do with people's systems rather than the application itself.
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#5 Re: ltspice

Post by ed »

jack wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 7:46 pm I've used XVII for years with absolutely no problems at all, including using it for complex models of my own design.

I sometimes think the reported issues are more to do with people's systems rather than the application itself.
I too have used it for years without any problems. This problem may have surfaced because I hadn't updated for so long, but this pc is well over 10 years old now, which may have contributed.

Back to my original post... I still don't see any excuse for writing programs that put up windows that hog the screen...in 1995 maybe, but not now.
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#6 Re: ltspice

Post by jack »

If ltspice was full screen when you opened it up and started the update then any modal window will seem to lock the system, however you can still switch application with the control tab keys.
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#7 Re: ltspice

Post by ed »

it wasn't
unfortunately I can't recreate the situation so I can't explain further

the behaviour wasn't anything I've seen before..the update window retained focus when other programs were loaded, preventing any use of other programs by obscuring them....

the only time I've seen this behavious is in games programming where the canvas is monopolised.

anyway it's gone now.....the thread really is to advise anybody experiencing problems updating xvii that it may be better to uninstall and reinstall the latest download.

*** on reflection I may have misled by not explaining correctly.....subsequent programs that were loaded did acquire focus but were obscured by the ltspice update window which had no screen controls(x and - in top right) so the only way I could sort it was to remove the parent process with procexp. Could also have done it with task amanger via ctrl alt del I suppose....but either way it's terminal. From memory I'm not even sure if ltspice was the parent prog...In fact I'm sure it wasn't.
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