Problems typing in Russian (MiKTeX)

Question

I'm trying to make a LaTeX file in Russian. I wrote the following in the preamble:

\usepackage[cp1251]{inputenc} 
\usepackage[T2A]{fontenc} 
\usepackage[russian]{babel} 

However, when I try to make a PDF out of it, I get

"Couldn't find 'larm10.cfg'
miktex-maketfm: No creation rule for font larm1000.

Where am I going wrong?

Answer 1

The following MWE works for me and generates the image below.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[english,russian]{babel}
\usepackage[T1,T2A]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\begin{document}

\section{Здравствуйте}

Здравствуйте! Как у вас дела? Меня зовут Калеб. Как вас зовут?

\end{document}

Perhaps installing the full MiKTeX 2.9 distribution or TeX Live distribution will solve this issue.

If this does not work or if you simply cannot get it to work with LaTeX, you might want to consider using XeTeX. With XeTeX, you can use any of your system fonts in your document. Consider this MWE and the output it generates below.

%!TEX TS-program = xelatex
%!TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage{xltxtra} % loads: fixltx2e, metalogo, xunicode, fontspec
\defaultfontfeatures{Mapping=tex-text}
\setmainfont{PT Sans}

\begin{document}

\section{Здравствуйте}

Здравствуйте! Как у вас дела? Меня зовут Калеб. Как вас зовут?

\end{document}

Here I'm using PT Sans. Of course, you then might want to consider using polyglossia instead of babel.

Answer 2

You should install at least the following MiKTeX packages:

cmcyr
cyrillic
cm-super

The first provides the Computer Modern Cyrillic fonts, which are required to begin typesetting in Russian. The second contains support files and the third provides the Type1 font files for better rendering and printing. It should be considered to install the full MiKTeX distribution and forget about downloading packages.

It's better also to use the UTF-8 encoding, if your editor supports it (and change editor if it doesn't). A typical file for typesetting in Russian starts as

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[T2A]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[russian]{babel}

If also English is needed (and the main language is Russian), then

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[T1,T2A]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english,russian]{babel}

is the better option (with T1 possibly omitted, which is instead necessary for other European languages written in the latin script).

The order fontenc inputenc babel avoids spurious warnings by Babel and makes sure that the correct encodings are chosen.