Plugin initialization failed: The maintenance tool at "C:\Qt/MaintenanceTool.exe" is not an executable. Check your installation.

Gilad Reich

Hello everyone,
So I moved my Qt installation from C:\Qt into C:\develop\Qt and now every time I start the QtCreator, I get the following error:

Plugin initialization failed: The maintenance tool at "C:\Qt/MaintenanceTool.exe" is not an executable. Check your installation.

So I'm trying to get the installation right without have to go through the re-installation proccess.
So I went to the registry and looked for keys and values that contains "C:\Qt" and changed them to "C:\develop\Qt" and that didn't sort out the problem.
Then I went to %appdata% and removed the QtProject folder including in local appdata, so Qt can re-configure itself. That didn't help either.
I also went inside the MaintenanceTool.dat and changed it's strings from C:\Qt to C:\develop\Qt.
Now I'm kind of running out of options...What can I change more to get this right?
Currently I'm running search in my qt installation with the following command:

findstr /S /I /X /N "C:\Qt"

With hope I can find out where this thing gets linked.
Is anyone of you ever had to handle with this situation?

koahnig

@Gilad-Reich

AFAIK it is still the case that you cannot simply move an installed Qt version to another folder. The reason is that some absolute path values are stored in executables. There has been a tool in the past to allow changing those stored values.

However, out of personal experience I would recommend simply to reinstall once again. This may take time, but avoids a lot of pain.

Gilad Reich

@koahnig said in Plugin initialization failed: The maintenance tool at "C:\Qt/MaintenanceTool.exe" is not an executable. Check your installation.:

@Gilad-Reich

AFAIK it is still the case that you cannot simply move an installed Qt version to another folder. The reason is that some absolute path values are stored in executables. There has been a tool in the past to allow changing those stored values.

However, out of personal experience I would recommend simply to reinstall once again. This may take time, but avoids a lot of pain.

Interesting! Thanks for the info @koahnig. That gets me into thinking of doing some hex editing in the binaries ^_^
Re-installing takes more than 2 hours in my case and about 25 GB :O quiet sad that there is no built-in function for that, especially with those big qt installation. I guess if I find a way to get this properly linked to the right path's, then I can re-create a tool like this and hopefully help others.
But if anyone from the qt team would like to throw some more information on this, that would be less painful to go over this by myself and of course very appreciated!

jsulm

@Gilad-Reich said in Plugin initialization failed: The maintenance tool at "C:\Qt/MaintenanceTool.exe" is not an executable. Check your installation.:

about 25 GB

Sounds like you have many different Qt builds - do you need all of them?

Gilad Reich

@jsulm said in Plugin initialization failed: The maintenance tool at "C:\Qt/MaintenanceTool.exe" is not an executable. Check your installation.:

@Gilad-Reich said in Plugin initialization failed: The maintenance tool at "C:\Qt/MaintenanceTool.exe" is not an executable. Check your installation.:

about 25 GB

Sounds like you have many different Qt builds - do you need all of them?

To be quite frank with you, yea.
My setup is basically with mingw53_32, msvc2015, msvc2015_64, msvc2017_64, android_x86, android_armv7 including sources.
That's the reason I was hoping it is simple as just moving the directory location instead of having to go through the re-installation process.

jsulm

@Gilad-Reich No problem. Just wanted to be sure as some people just select a whole Qt version in installer which currently selects around 35GB :-)

Gilad Reich

@jsulm said in Plugin initialization failed: The maintenance tool at "C:\Qt/MaintenanceTool.exe" is not an executable. Check your installation.:

@Gilad-Reich No problem. Just wanted to be sure as some people just select a whole Qt version in installer which currently selects around 35GB :-)

Indeed massive ^_^ Thanks for the concern!

koahnig

@Gilad-Reich said in Plugin initialization failed: The maintenance tool at "C:\Qt/MaintenanceTool.exe" is not an executable. Check your installation.:

Re-installing takes more than 2 hours in my case and about 25 GB :O quiet sad that there is no built-in function for that, especially with those big qt installation. I guess if I find a way to get this properly linked to the right path's, then I can re-create a tool like this and hopefully help others.
But if anyone from the qt team would like to throw some more information on this, that would be less painful to go over this by myself and of course very appreciated!

Personally I would prefer the 2 hours of download instead of thinking that this is done in10 minutes and giving up after 2 days ;)
Maybe nowadays it is no longer the big deal, but it was with Qt 4 back then IIRC. I think it was even magnified since I wanted to have a longer path set.

As already indicated by @jsulm choose wisely and think about what you really require, helps as well. It is an easy trap for simply clicking and filling the HD/SSD to the rim.

Gilad Reich

@koahnig said in Plugin initialization failed: The maintenance tool at "C:\Qt/MaintenanceTool.exe" is not an executable. Check your installation.:

Personally I would prefer the 2 hours of download

You convinced me, thanks for the advice! :)

😭😭

Luckly I was motivated enough this week to upgrade my SSD speeds thanks to the Qt big installation ^_^

I hope one day Qt will make the installation more portable for situations like these.

koahnig

@Gilad-Reich said in Plugin initialization failed: The maintenance tool at "C:\Qt/MaintenanceTool.exe" is not an executable. Check your installation.:

I hope one day Qt will make the installation more portable for situations like these.

I think they will not. It is probably the whole point of Qt installer framework to get this the right way. The online installer is for where the download is not an issue. The offline installer is for places with restricted internet access.

The path within the executables is part to ease the quick switching between setups with the kits.

There might be also some registry entries on windows.

As you see with yourself a couple of minutes are less of a problem. Internet flat rates and large SSD do the rest.

mrjj

Hi
Just as note:
I did move Qt from c:\ to d:\ and used MKLink
to make symbolic links. (on win 10)
I saw no side effects but only used it for like 3 weeks until i got new disk and reinstalled.

and that is some nice numbers for MB/s.
I am from a time where 20 MB/s was fast :)

king_fei

Hi, Have you solved this problem?
I moved my Qt installation form C:/Qt to D:/Qt, it has same issue.

I tried to copy only "MaintenanceTool.exe" to C:/Qt , the issue has disappeared.
But i think It just deceived QtCreator and didn't really solve the problem.

mrjj

@king_fei

Hi
Basically it used to be not a good idea to move the folder around after installation.
However, from 5.14
https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-is-relocatable
it should work fine.