QT Windows Desktop GUI program crashes in Release mode but does not crash in Debug mode

Question

I have this strange problem where running the release version of my GUI app on Windows crashes at startup and prints out the following (abridged) output:

Starting C:........\build-WindowsUI-Desktop_Qt_5_4_0_MSVC2010_OpenGL_32bit-Release\release\WindowsUI.exe...
The program has unexpectedly finished.
C:.............\build-WindowsUI-Desktop_Qt_5_4_0_MSVC2010_OpenGL_32bit-Release\release\WindowsUI.exe crashed

There is no other information given. Compiler output seems normal and no crash detailed information is printed. When I run the debug version: everything is fine. The GUI runs normally and no problems encountered.

Has anyone else encountered something like this before? I'm stuck here.

Answer 1

Thank you Mailerdaimon!

I took at look at my QT project file. In my .pro file I tell the linker to use specific dlls for release and debug mode. Based on your idea, I tried commenting out the sections that specify the dlls based on which type of executable was being outputted:

#win32|win64:debug {
# need to link DLL versions of library for Debug
#LIBS += -L"../ThirdParty/thirdPartyDlls" \
#
#         -lthirdPartyD
#
#}

#win32|win64:release {
# need to link DLL versions of  library for release
LIBS += -L"../ThirdParty/thirdPartyDlls" \

         -lthirdParty

#}

And now release mode works! I guess I used the wrong syntax in the .pro file or maybe it's a bug in Qt Creator. Either way I got it working now :). Thanks again!