pdflatex crashing with no error message and no output

Question

I just switched to a new laptop, installed Miktex and Texmaker, and cannot get pdflatex to work. When started from inside Texmaker, the program runs for a few seconds, then spits out nothing. No error messages (or messages of any kind) in the log, no PDF, nothing. When run from the command line (using 'C:\Users\Name> pdflatex "D:\test.tex" ), I get a message that pdflatex is starting:

"Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Charlie Beer>pdflatex "D:\test.tex"
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.16 (MiKTeX 2.9 64-bit)
entering extended mode
(D:/test.tex
LaTeX2e <2015/10/01> patch level 2
Babel <3.9n> and hyphenation patterns for 69 languages loaded.

C:\Users\Charlie Beer> "

then it runs for a few seconds and I get an error that the program pdflatex has stopped responding and must be closed. The test file I'm using is a pretty basic document which builds just fine on both of the other computers to which I have access. Any help on getting this to run properly would be appreciated. Thanks.

UPDATE: When I simplify my file to use only basic packages, it builds:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}  
\usepackage{amsmath}  
\usepackage{amsfonts}  

\title{A Stochastic Control Model for Energy Markets}  
\author{Charles Beer}  
\date{\today}  
\begin{document}  
\maketitle  
\section{Abstract}  
PLAIN TEXT  
\end{document}  

However, if I try to use extra packages, it seems that Miktex's package manager hangs and causes a crash:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}  
\usepackage{amsmath}  
\usepackage{amsfonts}  
\usepackage{color,soul}  
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}  

\title{A Stochastic Control Model for Energy Markets}  
\author{Charles Beer}  
\date{\today}  
\begin{document}  
\maketitle  
\section{Abstract}  
PLAIN TEXT  
\end{document}  

Answer 1

I was hitting exactly the same problem, and solved it by uninstalling the x64 version of MiKTeX and installing the x32 version instead. I'm now prompted to download the missing packages.

Hopefully this answer doesn't come too late!