Could not find or load the Qt platform plugin ‘windows’

This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin «windows» in «C:\Users\jsmith\AppData\Local\Temp_MEI23522\qt5_plugins\platforms».

Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

My PyInstaller spec:

So I ran into this problem while compiling my PyQt5 5.8.2 (with Python 3.6.1) program with the latest version of PyInstaller with pip , and, it works fine! The one-file executable works on the computer that compiled it.

But when I test it on another computer or virtual machine that doesn’t have everything set up already, then, it crashes on start with this error:

could not find or load the Qt platform plugin ‘windows’

So here’s what I have found so far. Since I set the platform plugin path environment variable in the code, it has the path ( C:\Users\jsmith\AppData\Local\Temp\_MEI23522\qt5_plugins\platforms ), and I know for a fact the qwindows.dll is in there because I was able to access it through the path before the folder was automatically deleted (since it’s in temp ) (I’ve also done onedir before just to make sure it was there, it was). So does that mean it sees it but is unable to load it, or is it something else I’m missing?

Also, UPX is disabled and isn’t even on my computer, so that isn’t the problem.

By the way, this is not a duplicate. I have already looked on SO for similar questions and all of them were either for a different type of application or the solutions were for a different type of problem. I have looked everywhere for days and haven’t found the solution.

Error: Could not find or load the Qt platform plugin “windows” — PyQt + Pyinstaller

I am trying to bundle a PyQt project using Pyinstaller. I tried creating package using command pyinstaller —onedir Hello.py .

This creates dist folder and has Hello.exe. On running it gets the error: This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin «windows»in «». Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

I solved the issue in my PC by

1. setting environment variable QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH

1. Copying dist\Hello\PyQt5\Qt\plugins\platform folder to where Hello.exe exists.

But this issue exists when I bundle to a single file using command —onefile, and run on any other machine, where QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH is not set.

Can someone help to figure out the issue.

3 Answers 3

This is a problem a lot of people were struggling with (including myself). See for example this bug report.

Suggestion 1 (recommended): upgrade to pyinstaller v3.4. According to this pull request, several issues have been solved, in particular the one the OP is referring to. There is generally better support for PyQt5 now.

Suggestion 2: this one worked for me, but is not recommended. It may help for older versions of PyQt5 or if you are not able to upgrade to pyinstaller 3.4: Locate the site-packages directory of your python distribution and apply the following two changes to the PyInstaller module:

Source: see pull request #2991 by user shadchin.

(I further recommend to use python 3.x. I struggled to bundle PyQt5 successfully for python 2.7.x, but I do not remember if the problems occurred on windows or macOS.)

Qt 5.1.1: Application failed to start because platform plugin “windows” is missing

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:

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:

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?

19 Answers 19

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).

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.

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

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/ )

Setting the QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable to %QTDIR%\plugins\platforms\ worked for me.

It was also mentioned here and here.

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.

I added the above line to the main method before the QApplication call like this:

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

I found another solution. Create qt.conf in the app folder as such:

And then copy the plugins folder into the app folder and it works for me.

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

This worked for me.

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.

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:

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

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.

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

So be aware. Using windeployqt withMinGW will give the same error stated here.

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)

Use this batch file: RunWithQt.bat

• 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

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

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:

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:

In this little example, «Polyhedron.cmd» contains the following text:

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 «%

This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin «windows»

Ошибка not find or load the Qt platform plugin «minimal» в Ubuntu IDE (qtcreator)
Здравствуйте. В основных сообщениях при компиляции это: Не удалось загрузить типы из модуля.

Ошибка This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized
Здравствуйте. При запуске QT приложения возникает такая ошибка: This application failed to start.

Could not find the Qt platform plugin «windows» in «»
у меня ошибка : Could not find the Qt platform plugin «windows» in «» This application failed to.

«Failed to start application (Code:4)». Я не могу войти в аську
У меня ISQ 6.5. При входе выдает ошибку. Пишет «Failed to start application (Code:4)». Я могу войти.

А можно поконкретней? В общем, все как обычно

Добавлено через 1 час 11 минут
Сообщение об ошибке выглядит вот так

Если создать переменную QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH и задать путь к папке, где лежит plugins или platforms или qwindows, то пустые кавычки покажут этот путь.

Добавлено через 6 минут
Такой вариант тоже ничего не дает

Насколько я знаю, достаточно положить нужные dll’ки (минимум qwindows.dll) в папку platforms рядом с exe-файлом. И у меня это всегда работает.

PS
А статический вариант вроде платный, как бы. Был, во всяком случае.

Заказываю контрольные, курсовые, дипломные и любые другие студенческие работы здесь или здесь.

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