Android Emulator won't start from Android Studio on Windows 10

Question

Recently (after install Android Studio 2.3.x, I'm now at 2.3.1) the emulator won't start in Android Studio.

I can run the emulator from the command line if it is in the SDK\tools directory.

If I run the emulator from a directory other than the SDK\tools directory I get an error like this:

[12236]:ERROR:./android/qt/qt_setup.cpp:28:Qt library not found at ..\emulator\lib64\qt\lib
Could not launch '..\emulator/qemu/windows-x86_64/qemu-system-i386.exe': No such file or directory

The tools and platform-tools directories are in my path. Android_home is set correctly. First I tried re-installing the emulator from the SDK manager in Android (now that the standalone SDK manager is gone I can't do it there). I manually downloaded the SDK and installed it overtop of the old SDK. I then tried putting it in a new directory and changing the ANDROID_HOME and updating my paths and changed the setting in Android Studio (and all the local.properties files). Next I completely uninstalled Android Studio and SDK, rebooted and reinstalled Android Studio. Still having the same problem.

I've tried the suggestions here in the question here: Emulator on Android Studio doesn't start after SDK tools update to 25.3.1 by copying various directories (first sym-links then copy directories as sym-links work differently on windows).

I've tried all the suggestions here: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37137213 as well.

I've re-installed HAXM, but I don't think it is an Emulator problem as it does work when I start it from a command prompt in the tools directory.

Any suggestions?

Details:
Windows 10 (Build 1703)
Android Studio 2.3.1

Answer 1

I've resolved the problem in this way:

in command line, from the folder containing avd images, I've run the emulator.exe against a virtual device image using the switch -gpu swiftshader.

To be precise, in my case, in command line, from the folder C:\<Users>\.android\avd I've typed

<android sdk folder>\emulator\emulator.exe @Nexus_4_Lollipop -gpu swiftshader

where Nexus_4_Lollipop is a name of the avd image.