LTspice 26.0.2.1 exits immediately after startup on Windows 11

Hi JCaldwell ,

Sorry about that; very frustrating. Thank you for the clear explanation. It might help troubleshooting if you can produce a verbose log of the install using the following at the command line:

msiexec /i "C:\MyPackages\LTspice64.msi" /L*V "C:\Logs\InstallerLog.log 

Graphics are rarely the problem. Are you on an ARM machine or x64? Did you have previous installations? What versions?

thanks,

mike

Hi Mike, 

Thanks for the quick response. I am using a x64 machine. I've uninstalled the program and then reinstalled and created the attached log files. The version I had previously installed that was working has been uninstalled, so I'm not sure of the specific version but it would have been downloaded in Feb 2025 with the latest at the time. 7713.InstallerLog.log

JCaldwell said:

Feb 2025 with the latest at the time.

Did you ever have LTspice XVII or 17.x installed? Would be circa 2023 or earlier.

mike

Not on this machine. This was new to me in Feb 2025. 

Hi Mike,

The install appears to complete successfully with status 0. I do not see an MSI failure such as Return Value 3, 1603, or rollback.

After the install, LTspice is present at:

C:\Program Files\ADI\LTspice\LTspice.exe

Launching that executable directly also does nothing visible. No main window appears, no LTspice process remains in Task Manager, and I do not see a new Event Viewer or Reliability Monitor crash entry.

From the log/system info:

• Machine appears to be x64, not ARM
• Windows build: 26200
• Graphics: Intel Iris Xe, DisplayLink devices also present
• Antivirus detected: Windows Defender
• Visual C++ runtime detected: 14.3
• Previous LTspice installation existed, but version is unknown. Current installed version appears to be 26.0.2.1.

One additional observation: when I delete/rename LTspice.ini and launch LTspice, the first-run diagnostic/usage-data dialog appears. After clicking either Yes or No, LTspice exits immediately. No new AppData\Local\LTspice folder appears to be created afterward.

Please let me know if there is a command-line flag, startup log, registry location, or crash-dump setting I can enable to capture why LTspice is exiting after the first-run dialog.

Thanks,
John

Hi JCaldwell ,

JCaldwell said:

One additional observation: when I delete/rename LTspice.ini and launch LTspice, the first-run diagnostic/usage-data dialog appears. After clicking either Yes or No, LTspice exits immediately. No new AppData\Local\LTspice folder appears to be created afterward.

The behavior you describe is 99%-of-the-time related to the fact that LTspice cannot find the library files, because of an admin install, or an old ini is lurking and getting in the way. I did have a user where a new machine had files transferred from an old machine, where many program files existed in a liminal space created by MS off of the desktop. It took a about an hour of screenshare to find the lurking ini, which did not show up in search! In this case, I was able to help the user find it by looking at where the LTspice shortcut was pointing.

JCaldwell said:

Previous LTspice installation existed, but version is unknown. Current installed version appears to be 26.0.2.1.

Good chance this is the problem. The designer of the install here has told me several times that the solution is to find all of the ini files and get rid of them. It appears that that is not working for you. I'll see what I can find out.

mike

Hi JCaldwell ,

Any chance you have an LTspiceXVII.ini in Roaming?

mike

Hi Mike,

I searched for LTspice INI files and only found:

• C:\Users\caldwellj\AppData\Roaming\LTspice.ini
• C:\Users\caldwellj\AppData\Roaming\LTspice_20260623_134713.ini
• C:\Program Files\ADI\LTspice\updater.ini

The newly generated LTspice.ini appears to be a default configuration with no custom library paths or old install references.

I also verified that the LTspice libraries exist:

• C:\Users\caldwellj\AppData\Local\LTspice\lib
• C:\Users\caldwellj\AppData\Local\LTspice\examples

and both contain the expected files.

The current behavior is:

1. Delete LTspice.ini
2. Launch LTspice
3. Usage-data dialog appears
4. Select either Yes or No
5. LTspice immediately exits

No crash dialog appears, no Event Viewer error is logged, no Reliability Monitor failure is recorded, and the process exits with code 0.

Is there a startup logging option, debug mode, or registry location that would show what LTspice is doing immediately after the usage-data dialog is dismissed?

Hi JCaldwell ,

Can you share the LTspice.ini file created when you attempt to start.

mike

I have seen where LTspice is prevented from writing to the ini file.