I know it's still in beta but I wanted to share in case anyone else has this issue!

Note: Everything worked last night- no idea what changed between 11pm last night and 7am this morning…

If I use the Houdini Launcher I get a slew of what looks to be python errors and Houdini becomes useless!
Console pops up and I get a lot of errors, mostly something like:

Could not create the default HDA shelf tool for ‘hscriptinstance’:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “C:/PROGRA~1/SideFX/HOUDIN~1.461/houdini/python2.7libs\hou.py”, line 70542, in <module>
__finishImport()
File “C:/PROGRA~1/SideFX/HOUDIN~1.461/houdini/python2.7libs\hou.py”, line 70362, in __finishImport
import houpythonportion.qt
File “C:/PROGRA~1/SideFX/HOUDIN~1.461/houdini/python2.7libs\houpythonportion\qt\__init__.py”, line 12, in <module>
from houpythonportion.qt.ParmChooserButton import ParmChooserButton
File “C:/PROGRA~1/SideFX/HOUDIN~1.461/houdini/python2.7libs\houpythonportion\qt\ParmChooserButton.py”, line 3, in <module>
from hutil.Qt import QtCore
File “C:/PROGRA~1/SideFX/HOUDIN~1.461/houdini/python2.7libs\hutil\Qt.py”, line 396, in <module>
cli(sys.argv) if __name__ == “__main__” else init()
File “C:/PROGRA~1/SideFX/HOUDIN~1.461/houdini/python2.7libs\hutil\Qt.py”, line 369, in init
raise ImportError(“No Qt binding were found.”)
ImportError: No Qt binding were found.

It eventually opens but NOTHING works- can't even make a sphere!

However, if I start Houdini without the launcher it works! … spent an embarrassing amount of time looking for a remedy.
I really like the Launcher and I'm not sure what happened but for now, for me at least, it's down for the count!

BTW This is only when using the launcher for anything other than H18. H18 starts up via the Launcher without issue. 17.5 and below give me that long list of errors.

Hi, I'm actually getting the exact same errors but I'm getting it when I launch H18 daily builds, not from the launcher. And it is only happening to me when trying to open houdini 18, 17.5 works fine. I've been in contact with sidefx support but they have not been able to solve the issue. If anyone else having similar issue please post maybe we can find a common cause.

Getting the same issue with H18

I am getting the same error also for 17.5.

OK, I found a solution, at least it worked for me.
Was googling forums for similar problems when someone mentioned they had qt dll files in windows/system32, potentially installed by another program, and deleting those files allowed their program to run. I backed up the files and deleted them and low and behold houdini runs fine now. These are the files that were in windows/system32 that I just deleted.

Thanks a lot!
I was going crazy over this.
My files were in a dir under my Megascans library (legacy plugins).

///Mattias