[Tex/LaTex] MiKTeX: Two things did not succeed

errorsmiktextexworkswindows

I installed a new hard drive on my computer this summer and I'm trying to install MiKTeX on it now. There were no problems when I was using my old hard drive. My OS is Windows 8.1. I'm trying to compile the following very basic file with pdfLaTeX:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}  
hi  
\end{document}

Here's the first error I get:

Sorry, but "MiKTeX Configuration Utility" did not succeed.    
The log file hopefully contains the information to get MiKTeX going again:
  C:/Users/Tyler/AppData/Local/MiKTeX/2.9/miktex/log/initexmf.log

You may want to visit the MiKTeX project page (http://miktex.org), if you need help.

With the following errors in the log:

2015-09-03 22:23:51,625-0400 INFO  initexmf - starting: MiKTeX Configuration Utility 2.9.5700 (MiKTeX 2.9 64-bit)   
2015-09-03 22:23:51,631-0400 FATAL initexmf - Windows API error 32: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.
2015-09-03 22:23:51,631-0400 FATAL initexmf - Info: C:\Users\Tyler\AppData\Local\MiKTeX\2.9\miktex/data/le\1e0c0e04cb3be262fbb8e6e7ace14b67.fndb
2015-09-03 22:23:51,631-0400 FATAL initexmf - Source: Libraries\MiKTeX\Core\win\winFile.cpp
2015-09-03 22:23:51,631-0400 FATAL initexmf - Line: 520

The second error:

Sorry, but C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\x64\miktex-pdftex.exe did not succeed.
The log file hopefully contains the information to get MiKTeX going again:
  C:/Users/Tyler/AppData/Local/MiKTeX/2.9/miktex/log/miktex-pdftex.log

You may want to visit the MiKTeX project page (http://miktex.org), if you need help.

with the following errors in the log:

2015-09-03 22:16:18,715-0400 INFO  miktex-pdftex - running 'initexmf --quiet --update-fndb' to refresh the file name database
2015-09-03 22:16:18,746-0400 FATAL miktex-pdftex - The operation failed for some reason.
2015-09-03 22:16:18,746-0400 FATAL miktex-pdftex - Info: C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\x64\initexmf.exe
2015-09-03 22:16:18,746-0400 FATAL miktex-pdftex - Source: Libraries\MiKTeX\Core\Process.cpp
2015-09-03 22:16:18,746-0400 FATAL miktex-pdftex - Line: 290

Things I've tried:

  • Uninstalling and reinstalling MiKTeX
  • Downloading all packages whose name starts with miktex (which is a solution that worked for someone else in a different thread)
  • Having nothing open but TeXworks when trying to compile
  • Looking for processes that may be related to MiKTeX in the task manager (I didn't find any)

How can I stop these errors? I apologize if my formatting is bad; this is my first stackexchange question. Thank you for your help.

Best Answer

Close texworks.

Compile your document in some other editor or on the command line so that miktex can do whatever maintenance tasks it wants to do. There is a bug report that texworks currently interferes with miktex: http://sourceforge.net/p/miktex/bugs/2394/.

This bug shouldn't affect normal compilation later on.