orcad pspice complains about simulation server

That is a problem with every piece of commercial CAD software I've ever use d. Even if you have a perpetual license, it requires either an annual rene wal or network contact with the mothership. If for any reason that is no l onger supported, your software doesn't work. The license gives you permiss ion to run the software, not necessarily the means.

Heck, once I ordered CAD software for a non-trivial prices. It was stated to include Modelsim. When I got the package it didn't, it included Aldec's Active-HDL instead. I complained and they said, "tough". In the end it w orked fine and I was happy, but the bait and switch certainly pissed me off at the time.

I was a longtime PCAD user, and continued after Altium purchased PCAD. But their last PCAD update was 2006. Sometime after that I added Altium licenses, and soon after switched to Altium, even tho PCAD had important features missing from Altium. I work mostly with 17, because the 18 and 19 versions slow me down too much. However, I've hear they fixed most of the issues in 20, so I may give it a try soon. Meanwhile, all of my CAD files are still organized in a huge PCAD folder, likely why people think I'm still a PCAD user. But that's OK.

Finally I found the cause: The service DcomLaunch was stopped on my computer. Type services.msc from your command prompt window and activate DCOM Server Process Launcher. But don't ask me why Orcad spice needs it :-)

Hope this will be useful for others.