title: Qt Windows Deployment Process
body: <p>I am in the process of learning how to create applications using Qt. I created a small app that is running fine on any machine that has Qt installed. I want to deploy using dynamically linked Qt libraries to Windows. I followed the instructions found <a href="http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/windows-deployment.html" rel="nofollow">here</a> and with some help of other Stackoverflow articles I was able to get the application running without error, but now nothing shows up. There should be a small UI with buttons and such, but it isn't being displayed despite the fact that Windows Task manager reveals that the application is running.</p>
  
  <p>My first thought was that I was missing some dll files, but even if I copy every dll found in C:\Qt\5.5\msvc2013_64\bin, the entire C:\Qt\5.5\msvc2013_64\plugins directory, msvcp120.dll, msvcr120.dll and the plaforms\qwindows.dll to the application directory I still cannot get it to display the UI. </p>
  
  <p>The same application will run on any Win x64 machine with Qt installed. I just don't find asking users to download a 700mb set of tools to run a 9kb application a very robust solution.</p>
  
  <p>What step am I missing for Qt deployment to Windows?</p>
  
  <p>For specifics I have made this an <a href="https://github.com/CptMonkeyFist/ArkCharacterSelector" rel="nofollow">open source project.</a> You can see the release version of the application built in the bin/Win_x64 directory with all .dll files that I believe are necessary to run the application. If you copy that folder onto a Win x64 machine that doesn't have Qt installed then you should be able to reproduce my error.</p>
  
  <p>Edit1:
  I was asked to provide the list of files in my build/Release directory:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ArkCharacterSelector.exe
  ArkCharacterSelector.res
  CharacterManager.obj
  Logger.obj
  main.obj
  moc_CharacterManager.cpp
  moc_CharacterManager.obj
  qrc_qml.cpp
  qrc_qml.obj
  </code></pre>