TeXmaker is stuck on "Process Started"

Question

I am using TeXmaker on a Mac running ElCapitan. My copy of TeXmaker worked just fine until I decided to reinstall it. Now, it fails to compile documents with pdflatex. It used to compile normally, but now the compiling procedure hangs with "Process Started" in the Messages/Log window and it displays "/Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex" at the bottom of the principal window (cf. Picture 1).

The code used for instance is:

\documentclass[a4paper, 11pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[french]{babel}

\begin{document}

This is a test

\end{document}

Note that I am using MacTex 2016 and that I changed the paths in what I believe is the correct way for ElCapitan in the TeXmaker preferences (cf. Picture 2).

Thank you in advance for your help, Arnaud.

Answer 1

To be honest, it is very difficult to answer depending on such limited information. You may try your luck with the following. It may be the case that some of packages included in the preamble may not be available. If you are on Proxy internet connection (Eg.: University, Company etc.) You can open your MiKTeX Console (or any equivalent one on your PC). Click "Settings" on left pane. From drop-down menu of "Packages are installed from", click "Change", go to Connection Settings and change/update your internet proxy settings. Make sure you check "Authentication required" if needed. Click "Next" and put in your internet access login credentials if prompted. Choose any server to download packages and click "Finish". Now make sure you have the "Always install missing packages on the fly" radio button. Go back to your TexStudio window and Compile (F5). Hopefully it works. If some packages are missing, they will be installed and then the compilation goes through.

If the problem persists, In the top toolbar of Texstudio go to “Options” -- “Configure Texstudio” -- Build.

Change the default compiler (to say, XeLatex) and try the following. If the following steps do not work, change the default compiler and try again. More like trial and error.

You may get a error showing the names of the missing packages. You may consider installing them manually and try again.

You may see the screenshots as a reference, although not on macOS. https://i.stack.imgur.com/bNh5W.jpg

Answer 2

This may help someone:

In my case the event log got stuck at this point:

INFO  miktex-xelatex - this process (6743) started by 'texstudio' with command line: /Users/username/bin/miktex-xelatex
INFO  miktex-xelatex - allowing known shell commands
INFO  miktex-xelatex - enabling input (output) from (to) processes

Even after waiting for long, nothing happened after this.

When I checked my "Configure TexStudio" settings, they were like so:

Then I changed it to the following: (check the Latex, Pdflatex, Xelatex commands) (could be done easily by clicking the button circled in red above)

And voila! Things then worked normally!

The problem was with correctly formatting the commands and including filenames.