MATLAB: Do I receive the error ‘Cannot start engine’ when I run MuPAD in MATLAB R2013b or R2014a

After opening a MuPAD notebook and entering the following command:

1+1

I receive the error message:

'Cannot start engine'

Is that a bug?

Best Answer

This issue can be caused by the presence of non standard characters in the User Init path.

1. From the MATLAB command window start MuPAD with the command "mupad"

2. When the notebook comes up, choose View->Configure from the menu and check your User Init Path

3. If the User Init Path contains non standard characters(e.g. Cyrillic alphabets) please change it to a path with only English alphabets.

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MATLAB: Do I receive the error ‘cannot start engine’ when I run MuPAD in MATLAB R2013b or R2014a

This issue could be caused due to wrong libraries for the MuPAD executable being found

To fix the issue, copy mupkern.exe to the platform specific binary directory by following these steps:

1. Navigate to the folder where the MuPAD executable "mupkern.exe" is located. On a standard Windows 64-bits installation of MATLAB R2014a, this folder is located in

C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2014a\toolbox\symbolic\mupad\win64\bin

More generally, you can find this folder by typing the following command in the Command Window:

>> [matlabroot '\toolbox\symbolic\mupad\' computer('arch') '\bin']

*2.* From this folder, for the standard Windows 64-bits installation of MATLAB R2014a, copy mupkern.exe to the directory

C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2014a\bin\win64

More generally copy mupkern.exe to the platform specific binary directory that can be found by typing the following command in the Command Window:

>> [matlabroot '\bin\' computer('arch')]

3. From the MATLAB Command Window, start MuPAD with the command "mupad"

4. If the notebook comes up, choose View->Configure from the menu.

5. In the Configure dialogue choose 'Engine'. Here, change the Engine entry to the new location of the mupkern.exe set in step 2.

For instance, for the standard Windows 64-bits installation of MATLAB R2014a the entry should be:

C:/Program Files/MATLAB/R2014a/bin/win64/mupkern.exe

6. Leave the Configure dialogue with the 'OK' button

MATLAB: Do I receive the error ‘cannot start engine’ when I run MuPAD in MATLAB R2012b or R2013a

This could be due to an issue with your PATH environment variable.

Issue the following command to view the PATH variable

getenv('PATH')

The 'cannot start engine' error may occur if the output contains previous installations of MATLAB, extinct directories, or a UNC path name. Use "setenv" to set the PATH variable without these elements and see if MuPAD works. If that does not resolve the issue, try editing the PATH variable with the following command:

setenv('PATH', [matlabroot '\bin\' computer('arch') ';' getenv('PATH')])

Note that "setenv" only resets the path in the current session of MATLAB and not the external system variable PATH stored by the operating system. Therefore, the next time you start MATLAB, the original PATH variable will be restored and you will recieve the same error. To effectively make the change to PATH variable permanent, you can add the appropriate "setenv" command to your startup.m file.

The issue caused by a non-existing UNC path in the PATH environment variable has been fixed in MATLAB R2013a.

Best Answer

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MATLAB: Do I receive the error ‘cannot start engine’ when I run MuPAD in MATLAB R2013b or R2014a

MATLAB: Do I receive the error ‘cannot start engine’ when I run MuPAD in MATLAB R2012b or R2013a

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