[Tex/LaTex] Configuration of Texmaker to work with MiKTeX Portable

miktextexmakerwindows

I have MiKTeX Portable on my USB, and I've installed Texmaker on my machine with Windows XP.

I cannot find a way to configure Texmaker so that it compiles with MiKTeX portable. It just prompts me with the message "Could not start the command."

I guess that I should configure that in Option -> Configure Texmaker -> Quick Build.
But I don't know what to do there.

I've done research and could not find solution. I find one workaround where they use Texmaker USB with MiKTeX Portable, but it's not I want (and it's quite complicated).

Any advice and help would be appreciated. Or if you know some other LaTeX editor that can be easily configured for MiKTeX Portable. The built in editor TeXworks works just fine, but I would love to have a more user friendly interface.

Edit

I use the following versions: Texmaker 4.1 and MiKTeX is 2.9.

Best Answer

I've had the same problem. I've found two ways to make it work:

Solution 1. Add miktex portable to the environment variable PATH.

Even if you don't have administrative privileges on the machine, you can usually set the variable just for your account. I wouldn't use it while keeping miktex on a USB drive but if you copied it onto the disk it should be alright.

  1. Go the folder with miktex and find the subfolder miktex\bin. Copy its full path (C:\...\miktex\bin).
  2. Go to the Start menu, type variable, select Edit environment variables for your account.
  3. On the upper list find PATH and double-click it. Add a semicolon (;) at the end of the text in the box and after that paste the previously copied path. Close everything with OKs. If you relaunch TexMaker, it should work now. Sometimes you need to log out of your Windows account and log back in, or restart your computer, before it works.

Solution 2. Launch TexMaker from within Miktex.

This solution has the benefit of not changing anything in the computer settings but it's not permanent - you need to do this every time you start TexMaker.

  1. Launch Miktex portable - double click the miktex-portable file.
  2. An icon appered in the system tray, next to the clock. Right-click it and select Command Prompt.
  3. Navigate to the folder with TexMaker using cd command (e.g. by typing cd C:\...\texmakerwin32usb, wherever you put it). Launch TexMaker by typing texmaker. It should be able to compile tex files now.
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