"MiKTeX Console cannot be started"

[ImperatorS79]

• I have read the MiKTeX Contributing Guidelines

The message "MiKTeX Console cannot be started" is displayed each time I try to launch miktex-update or miktex-console. I then tried to uninstall MiKTex and install again, but I had to remove the folders manually (in Program Files, ProgramData and AppData). In the end -> same problem.

Configuration report: initexmf_report.txt.

I did not find any log file about this but maybe there is a directory I do not know which contains them.

[edocevoli]

Please attach all log files (create a Zip archive) . Possible directories:

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\MiKTeX\2.9\miktex\log
C:\ProgramData\MiKTeX\2.9\miktex\log

[ImperatorS79]

Those directories were and stayed empty after launching miktex-console.

[edocevoli]

A possible reason for the early failure might be that MiKTeX cannot create the lock file miktex-console.lock in the home directory. Have you set the environment variable HOME? What are the values of HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH?

[edocevoli]

Please start DebugView prior to MiKTeX Console. This should give us some more info.

[ImperatorS79]

I got

[3356] Invalid stoi argument

HOMEDRIVE is C: and HOMEPATH is \Users\<user>. HOME is not set.

[edocevoli]

Does your home directory contains miktex-cpnsole.lock? If so, please post the content.

[ImperatorS79]

The content is unreadable. (Bunch of "NUL" in notepad++)

[ImperatorS79]

I deleted the .lock and now it works 🤔.

[edocevoli]

Thank you. I will modify the error message.

[edocevoli]

I have improved the error message.