Can't enable shell-escape

Question

I've been trying to add the --shell-escape argument to my pdflatex, and right about nothing works. I'll summarize what I've done so far:

1. Add --shell-escape to existing pdflatex.exe
2. Add --shell-escape to \texlive\2013\bin\win32\pdflatex.exe
3. The console either gets stuck at "ABD: EveryShipout initializing macrosgnuplot not recognized", or
4. "Package gnuplottex Warning: Shell escape not enabled. (gnuplottex) You'll need to convert the graphs yourself..", or
5. TeXworks produces no PDF
6. I have also tried running different compilers such as miktex-pdftex.exe, pdftex.exe, etc.
7. I'm running the latest MikTeX / TeX distributions, packages, etc. (just updated everything in my TeX Live Manager)

This only seems to be a big deal when I run anything GNUplot related.

What's going on here?

Answer 1

To long for a comment. Run this document with --shell-escape:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\immediate\write18{echo "hallo"}
blub
\end{document}

Then check the log file. If you found thererunsystem(echo "hallo")...disabled (restricted) then --shell-escape has not been activated. If the message is runsystem(echo "hallo")...executed. then everything works and your problem lies somewhere else.