"QT platform plugin could not be initialized"

rpforbes

Hello all,
I've been going around in circles so I came to the source. Long story short: I installed a commercial program to find a lost .asd file in Windows. It didn't find the file, and now OneDrive has ceased to work, I get a blank screen when I enter a term in Search, Settings won't load, and essentially everything having to do with Microsoft's cool cloud operations is kaput. This pops up every few minutes: "This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix the problem." Can somebody give me a hand here? Thanks!

VRonin

The platform plugin is a dll (qwindows.dll). If you know the Qt version and compiler used by the application you can download the corresponding Qt package and copy the dll over. Ultimately, however, his is a problem you should report to the provider of the commercial app

rpforbes

Thanks, @VRonin. Any suggestions on how to get the software company to care? ;-)

VRonin

@rpforbes said in "QT platform plugin could not be initialized":

Thanks, @VRonin. Any suggestions on how to get the software company to care? ;-)

You paid for it right?! ask for either a fix or a refund!

rpforbes

@VRonin Sadly, a refund won't even cover a quarter of the time I've already expended. My gold-plated service agreement that I got when I purchased my machine direct from the Microsoft Store is not all that useful right now since they have closed all their outlets for the duration of the Current Unpleasantness.
(Query: If Apple Stores have Geniuses, what do Microsoft Stores have?)
You do good work on this forum, btw.

JKSH

This sounds similar to the issue encountered at https://forum.qt.io/topic/90293/could-not-find-or-load-the-qt-platform-plugin-windows-in

I'm guessing that the commercial software modified some global environment variables which breaks other Qt-based programs on your PC. (We know that the OneDrive client is Qt-based: https://forum.qt.io/topic/87898/microsoft-onedrive-sync-uses-qt-and-is-hiring-seattle-usa )

mrjj

Hi
Just as a note.
If its a commercial program,. did you check if it made a recovery point?

Also, did you try reinstalling one drive ?
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files/reinstall-onedrive/886b52a3-1944-4d86-a6c1-e940cd5a1b5f

rpforbes

@JKSH I think that's exactly what happened.

rpforbes

@mrjj, I did check; sadly no recovery point. Man, was I disappointed.
Reinstalled OneDrive, but access to all the Windows features (Windows key+anything, search, settings (the shell comes up, but none of the topics do) are still not working.

hskoglund

When you’re up a creek without a paddle this way in Windows 10,, one thing you could try is to create another user, log out and login as that new user.

mrjj

@rpforbes

Hi
Its a bit odd that search and such was also affected since its its not made in Qt so
it should not have happened.
Disk recovery tools rarely write to the registry however they
do fiddle with the file system.

I was wondering if you did run a full disk scan ?

chkdsk C: /f /r /x

(from admin command prompt. ask to do during boot)

and also a

sfc /scannow