Qt 5 1 1 Application failed to start because platform plugin windows is missing

Question

Edit  Some people started to mark my question as a duplicate  Do not forget that many similar questions existed when I asked this one  see e g  the list below   However  none of these answers solved my problem  After a long search I found a comment which had been ignored by all users pointing to the missing lib  Now  many months later  the comment has been changed to an answer  However  when I answered this question by msyself I intended to help other people by directly providing the solution  This should not be forgotten and so far my answer helped a lot of people  Therefore my question is definitely not a duplicate   By the way  The accepted answer within the provided link on top does not solve the problem     Yes  i used the search   Failed to load platform plugin  quot windows quot   Available platforms are   Error  Deploying Qt C   Application from Visual Studio qwindows dll error  failed to load platform plugin  quot windows quot  Available platforms are  windows  minimal  However  in my case the problem still persists  I am using Qt 5 1 1 with Visual Studio 2012 and developed my Application on Windows 7 with Qt Creator 2 8 1  Application is compiled in  Release -mode and can be executed if directly started with Qt Creator   However  when starting from the  release -Folder  i get the following message      This application failed to start because it could not find or load the   Qt platform plugin  windows    Available platform plugins are    minimal  offscreen  windows    Folder structure looks like this   release   gui exe   icudt51 dll   icuin51 dll   icuuc51 dll   libGLESv2 dll   Qt5Core dll   Qt5Gui dll   Qt5Widgets dll   platforms   Platforms is the folder directly copied from Qt Qt5 1 1 5 1 1 msvc2012 plugins platforms including e g  qwindows dll  Does not matter if I rename it to  platform  as some other users did  Qt is still not finding the  platform plugin windows   where is my mistake

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I had this problem while using QT 5 6  Anaconda 4 3 23  python 3 5 2 and pyinstaller 3 3  I had created a python program with an interface developed using QTcreator  but had to deploy it to other computers  therefore I needed to make an executable  using pyinstaller   I ve found that the problem was solved on my computer if I set the following environment variables      QT QPA PLATFORM PLUGIN PATH    QTDIR  plugins platforms       QTDIR  C  Miniconda3 pkgs qt-5 6 2-vc14 3 Library   But this solution only worked on my PC that had conda and qt installed in those folders    To solve this and make the executable work on any computer  I ve had to edit the   spec   file first generated by pyinstaller  to include the following line      datas       C  Miniconda3 pkgs qt-5 6 2-vc14 3 Library plugins platforms  dll      platforms        This solution is based on the answers of Jim G  and CrippledTable

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I had the same problem of running a QT5 application in windows 10   VS2019   My error was    Debug Qt5Cored dll  Module  5 14 1 File  kernel qguiapplication cpp Line  1249 This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized  Reinstalling the application may fix this problem  Solution Since I was using QT msvc2017  I copied plugins folders from  quot C  Qt Qt5 14 1 5 14 1 msvc2017 plugins quot  location to the binary location it worked  Then check visual studio output window and identify the dlls loaded from plugin folder and removed unwanted dlls

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I created a platforms directory next to my exe location and put qwindows dll inside  but I still received the  Failed to load platform plugin  windows    Available platforms are  windows  error   I had copied qwindows dll from C  Qt Qt5 1 1 Tools QtCreator bin plugins platforms  which is not the right location   I looked at the debug log from running in Qt Creator and found that my app was looking in C  Qt Qt5 1 1 5 1 1 mingw48 32 plugins platforms when it ran in the debugger     When I copied from C  Qt Qt5 1 1 5 1 1 mingw48 32 plugins platforms  everything worked fine

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For a MinGW platform and if you are compiling a Debug target by a hand made CMakeLists txt written ad hoc you need to add the qwindows dll to the platform dir as well  The windeployqt executable does its work well but it seems that for some strange reason the CMake build needs the release variant as well  In summary it will be better to have both the qwindows dll and qwindowsd dll in your platform directory  I did not notice the same strange result when importing the CMake project in QtCreator and then running the build procedure  Compiling on the command line the CMake project seems to trigger the qwindows dll dependency either if the correct one for the Debug target is set in place  qwindowsd dll

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Lets say  you wanted to have some CGAL-Demos portable  So you d have a folder  CGAL   and in it  1 subfolder called  lib   all  common  support-dlls for any programs in the CGAL-folder go here  In our example  this would be the Dll-Download  simply unzip into the  lib  directory  The further you scroll down on the demos-page  the more impressive the content  In my case  the polyhedron-demo seemed about right  If this runs on my 10  yo notebook  I m impressed  So I created a folder  demo  in the  CGAL -directory  alongside  lib   Now create a  cmd-file in that folder  I named mine  Polyhedron cmd   So we have a directory structure like this    CGAL - the bag for all the goodies   lib - all libraries for all CGAL-packages  demo - all the demos I m interested in       - certainly some other collections  several apps per folder    Polyhedron cmd - and a little script for every Qt-exe to make it truly portable    In this little example   Polyhedron cmd  contains the following text    echo off set  me   dp0  set PATH  me lib set  QT PLUGIN PATH  me lib plugins  start  b  CGAL Polyhedron Demo    me demo polyhedron polyhedron 3 exe    All scripts can be the same apart from the last line  obviously  The only caveat is  the  DOS-Window  stays open for as long as you use the actual program  Close the shell-window  and you kill the   exe as well  Whereever you copy the  CGAL -folder  as the weird    dp0 -wriggle represents the full path to the   cmd-file that we started  with trailing      So   me lib  is always the full path to the actual library   CGAL lib  in my case   The next 2 lines tell Qt where its  runtime  files are  This will be at least the file  qwindows dll  for Windows-Qt programs plus any number of   dlls  If I remember rightly  the Dll-library  at least when I downloaded it  had a little  bug  since it contains the  platforms -directory with qwindows dll in it  So when you open the lib directory  you need to create a folder  plugins  next to  platforms   and then move into  plugins   If a Qt-app  any Qt-app  doesn t find  qwindows dll   it cannot find  windows   And it expects it in a directory named  platforms  in the  plugins  directory  which it has to get told by the OS its running on   and if the  QT PLUGIN PATH  is not exactly pointing to all the helper-dlls you need  some Qt-programs will still run with no probs  And some complain about missing   dlls you ve never heard off

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Most of these answers contain good  correct  info  but in my case  there was still something missing   My app is built as a library  dll  and called by a non-Qt application   I used windeployqt exe to set up the Qt dlls  platforms  plugins  etc  in the install directory  but it still couldn t find the platform   After some experimentation  I realized the application s working directory was set to a different folder   So  I grabbed the directory in which the dll  lived  using GetModuleHandleExA and added that directory to the Qt library path at runtime using   QCoreApplication  addLibraryPath  lt result of GetModuleHandleExA gt      This worked for me

User · Answer

I found another solution   Create qt conf in the app folder as such    Paths  Prefix       And then copy the plugins folder into the app folder and it works for me

User · Answer

Use this batch file  RunWithQt bat   echo off set QTDIR C  Qt Qt5 1 1 5 1 1 msvc2012 bin set QT QPA PLATFORM PLUGIN PATH  QTDIR  plugins platforms  start  1    to use it  drag your gui exe file and drop it on the RunWithQt bat  in explorer  or call RunWithQt gui exe from the command line

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I had the same problem and solved it by applying several things  The first  if it is a program that you did with Qt   In the folder  in my case  of  C    Qt   Qt5 10 0   5 10 0   msvc2017 64   plugins  you find other folders  one of them is  platforms   That  platforms  folder is going to be copied next to your  exe executable  Now  if you get the error 0xc000007d is that you did not copy the version that was  since it can be 32bits or 64   If you continue with the errors is that you lack more libraries  With the  Dependency Walker  program you can detect some of the missing folders  Surely it will indicate to you that you need an NVIDIA  dll  and it tells you the location   Another way  instead of using  Dependency Walker  is to copy all the  dll from your  C    Windows   System32  folder next to your executable file  Execute your  exe and if everything loads well  so you do not have space occupied in dll libraries that you do not need or use  use the  exe program with all your options and without closing the  exe you do is erase all the  dll that you just copied next to the  exe  so if those  dll are being used by your program  the system will not let you erase  only removing those that are not necessary   I hope this solution serves you   Remember that if your operating system is 64 bits  the libraries will be in the System32 folder  and if your operating system is 32 bits  they will also be in the System32 folder  This happens so that there are no compatibility problems with programs that are 32 bits in a 64-bit computer  The SysWOW64 folder contains the 32-bit files as a backup

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For me the solution was to correct the PATH variable  It had Anaconda3 Library bin as one of the first paths  This directory contains some Qt libraries  but not all  Apparently  that is a problem  Moving C  Programs Qt 5 12 3 msvc2017 64 bin to the front of PATH solved the problem for me

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The release is likely missing a library plugin or the library is in the wrong directory and or from the wrong directory   Qt intended answer  Use windeployqt  see last paragraph for explanation  Manual answer   Create a folder named  platforms  in the same directory as your application exe file  Copy and paste the qwindows dll  found in the  bin of whichever compiler you used to release your application  into the  platforms  folder  Like magic it works  If the  dll is not there check plugins platforms    with plugins  being in the same directory as bin     lt -- PfunnyGuy s comment    It seems like a common issue is that the  dll was taken from the wrong compiler bin  Be sure to copy your the qwindows dll from the same compiler as the one used to release your app    Qt comes with platform console applications that will add all dependencies  including ones like qwindows dll and libEGL dll  into the folder of your deployed executable  This is the intended way to deploy your application  so you do not miss any libraries  which is the main issue with all of these answers   The application for windows is called windeployqt  There is likely a deployment console app for each OS

User · Answer

If you have Anaconda installed I recomend you to uninstall it and try installing python package from source  i fixed this problem in this way

User · Answer

I ran into this and none of the answers I could find fixed it for me     My colleauge has Qt  5 6 0  installed on his machine at  C  Qt Qt5 6 0 5 6 msvc2015 plugins   I have Qt  5 6 2  installed in the same location    I learned from this post   http   www tripleboot org  p 536  that the Qt5Core dll has a location to the plugins written to it when Qt is first installed  Since my colleague s and my Qt directories were the same  but different version of Qt were installed  a different qwindows dll file is needed   When I ran an exe deployed by him  it would use my C  Qt Qt5 6 0 5 6 msvc2015 plugins platforms qwindows dll file instead of the one located next to the executable in the   platforms subfolder   To get around this  I added the following line of code to the application which seems to force it to look next to the exe for the  platforms  subfolder before it looks at the path in the Qt5Core dll    QCoreApplication  addLibraryPath         I added the above line to the main method before the QApplication call like this   int main  int argc  char  argv           QCoreApplication  addLibraryPath           QApplication app  argc  argv                return app exec

User · Answer

create dir platforms  and copy qwindows dll to it  platforms and app exe are in the same dir   cd app dir mkdir platforms xcopy qwindows dll platforms qwindows dll   Folder structure    app exe   platforms qwindows dll

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For anyone coming from QT version 5 14 0  it took me 2 days to find this piece statment of bug       windeployqt does not work for MinGW QTBUG-80763 Will be fixed in   5 14 1   https   wiki qt io Qt 5 14 0 Known Issues  So be aware  Using windeployqt withMinGW will give the same error stated here

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Okay  as posted here https   stackoverflow com a 17271172 1458552 without much attention by other users    The libEGL dll was missing  Even though this has not been reported when trying to start the application  all other   dlls such as Qt5Gui dll had been reported

User · Answer

Setting QT PLUGIN PATH env variable to  lt     gt  plugins directory also worked for me

User · Answer

Setting the QT QPA PLATFORM PLUGIN PATH environment variable to  QTDIR  plugins platforms  worked for me   It was also mentioned here and here

User · Answer

The application qtbase bin windeployqt exe deploys automatically your application  If you start a prompt with envirenmentvariables set correctly  it deploys to the current directory  You find an example of script    echo off set QTDIR E  QT 5110 vc2017  set INCLUDE S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise VC Tools MSVC 14 15 26726 ATLMFC include S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise VC Tools MSVC 14 15 26726 include C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits NETFXSDK 4 6 1 include um C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 include 10 0 14393 0 ucrt C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 include 10 0 14393 0 shared C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 include 10 0 14393 0 um C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 include 10 0 14393 0 winrt C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 include 10 0 14393 0 cppwinrt  set LIB S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise VC Tools MSVC 14 15 26726 ATLMFC lib x86 S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise VC Tools MSVC 14 15 26726 lib x86 C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits NETFXSDK 4 6 1 lib um x86 C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 lib 10 0 14393 0 ucrt x86 C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 lib 10 0 14393 0 um x86   set LIBPATH S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise VC Tools MSVC 14 15 26726 ATLMFC lib x86 S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise VC Tools MSVC 14 15 26726 lib x86 S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise VC Tools MSVC 14 15 26726 lib x86 store references C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 UnionMetadata 10 0 17134 0 C  ProgramFiles  x86  Windows Kits 10 References 10 0 17134 0 C  Windows Microsoft NET Framework v4 0 30319   Path  QTDIR  qtbase bin  PATH  set VCIDEInstallDir S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise Common7 IDE VC  set VCINSTALLDIR S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise VC  set VCToolsInstallDir S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise VC Tools MSVC 14 11 25503  set VisualStudioVersion 15 0 set VS100COMNTOOLS C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 Common7 Tools  set VS110COMNTOOLS C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 11 0 Common7 Tools  set VS120COMNTOOLS S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 12 0 Common7 Tools  set VS150COMNTOOLS S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise Common7 Tools  set VS80COMNTOOLS C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 8 Common7 Tools  set VS90COMNTOOLS c  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 9 0 Common7 Tools  set VSINSTALLDIR S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise  set VSSDK110Install C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 11 0 VSSDK  set VSSDK150INSTALL S  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise VSSDK set WindowsLibPath C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 UnionMetadata C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 References set WindowsSdkBinPath C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin  set WindowsSdkDir C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10  set WindowsSDKLibVersion 10 0 14393 0  set WindowsSdkVerBinPath C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin 10 0 14393 0  set WindowsSDKVersion 10 0 14393 0  set WindowsSDK ExecutablePath x64 C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft SDKs Windows v10 0A bin NETFX 4 6 1 Tools x64  set WindowsSDK ExecutablePath x86 C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft SDKs Windows v10 0A bin NETFX 4 6 1 Tools   mkdir C  VCProjects Application Build VS2017 QT5 11 32-Release setup cd C  VCProjects Application Build VS2017 QT5 11 32-Release setup copy  Y    Release application exe   windeployqt application exe pause

[c++] Qt 5.1.1: Application failed to start because platform plugin "windows" is missing

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