Why am I unable to use some of my installed products after upgrading to a newer MATLAB version?

I have upgraded from an older release of MATLAB to MATLAB 7.14 (R2012a) and see the following warning message:

 Warning: Name is nonexistent or not a directory: C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2012a\toolbox\shared\eml\eml.

When I try to use some functions from other products like the Optimization Toolbox I see error messages like:

 Undefined function 'optimset' for input arguments of type 'char'.

What could be the cause of this and what can I do about it?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The warning message indicates there is a path definition problem. This could be caused by saving the MATLAB path definition file (PATHDEF.M) to the MATLAB startup folder.

The ability to share a single PATHDEF.M for multiple MATLAB releases is not available in MATLAB 7.14 (R2012a).

When you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7 with User Account Control (UAC) enabled, MATLAB may have been unable to save the MATLAB path definition file (PATHDEF.M) to the folder where MATLAB is installed. If this file was saved to the startup folder, this could cause this problem when upgrading MATLAB.

If you are migrating to the newer MATLAB and have removed or will remove the older version, you can restore the MATLAB path to the default path. You can use the Path Tool for this:

pathtool

or

File > Set Path...

Then press the "Default" button. You can now close the tool and save the new path settings, such that on restart MATLAB will have the default path. Alternatively you could first verify if everything works as expected or add any previously added custom paths. You can use the Path Tool to save a customized version of this path or use the

savepath

command to do the same.

If you would like to use multiple MATLAB versions side by side, you should remove the PATHDEF.M from the shared startup folder. Then there are multiple options you can follow:

1. Whenever you would like to change the MATLAB path, start MATLAB with Administrator privileges and save the MATLAB path.

2. Use a STARTUP.M file in the MATLAB startup folder to add custom paths with the ADDPATH function. The advantage of this solution is that when you change the STARTUP.M to add custom paths, these paths are added for all MATLAB releases that share the same startup folder.