Re: Sudden failure of MikTeX console: no Qt platform plugin

Dr Engelbert Buxbaum wrote:

Hi,
 
When I tried to do an update, I could no longer start the console
because of a missing Qt platform plugin. I tried to uninstall MikTeX and
then re-install it, but the uninstall also requires the plugin.
 
Anybody else also has the problem?

Some time ago, before switching to Debian Linux and TeXLive, I
encountered this, twice, when installing MiKTeX under Win 10.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Excursus:

In the Win95-days Qt was an abbreviation for Apple QuickTime player.

Nowadays there is another Qt-thing which is not related to Apple
QuickTime player:

A cross-platform application development framework for desktop, embedded
and mobile by the Qt Company. (<https://wiki.qt.io/About_Qt>)

In Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software), you find:

| Qt (pronounced "cute" or as an initialism) is a cross-platform
| application development framework for creating graphical user
| interfaces as well as cross-platform applications that run on various
| software and hardware platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS, Android
| or embedded systems with little or no change in the underlying
| codebase while still being a native application with native
| capabilities and speed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first time with MiKTeX I encountered message about missing qt
platform plugin, some of the MiKTeX stuff was blocked by some software
for malware detection. The MiKTeX Uodate manager was affected by this
blocking, too.

The second time I encountered  message about missing qt plugin I needed
to log in as administrator and to run the mikex package update in admin
mode,

  miktex --admin packages update

, after(!) manually setting the PATH environment variable appropriately
so that MikTeX binaries were found - s.th. like;

  set PATH=<USER>\AppData\Local\Programs\MiKTeX\miktex bin\x64;%PATH%

There are some Github-issues related to this:

- <https://github.com/MiKTeX/miktex/issues/1486>
- <https://github.com/MiKTeX/miktex/issues/1488>
- <https://github.com/MiKTeX/miktex/issues/1489>

There is also a question on TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange:

-
<https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/270862/qt-platform-plugin-not-found-since-updating-miktex/716743#716743>

Sincerely

Ulrich