DLL import error in Pycharm, but works fine outside

Question

I have new Anaconda and PyCharm installations on Windows machine.

Simply running

import numpy

raises

ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

In similar questions (1, 2), people suggest to check that PATH has paths to DLLs. In my case - it does! But instead, I have additional paths prepended to PATH when I start something from PyCharm. And I think this could be the problem.

When running from Anaconda prompt, sys.path is:

C:\Users\usr\Anaconda3\python37.zip
C:\Users\usr\Anaconda3\DLLs
C:\Users\usr\Anaconda3\lib
C:\Users\usr\Anaconda3
C:\Users\usr\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages
C:\Users\usr\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\win32
C:\Users\usr\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\win32\lib
C:\Users\usr\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\Pythonwin

When running from python console in Pycharm, sys.path is the same, except that now we have two addional lines in the beginning of the file:

C:\Users\usr\AppData\Local\JetBrains\Toolbox\apps\PyCharm-C\ch-0\182.4505.26\helpers\pydev
C:\Users\usr\AppData\Local\JetBrains\Toolbox\apps\PyCharm-C\ch-0\182.4505.26\helpers\pydev

By the way, the initial error is raised from C:\Users\usr\AppData\Local\JetBrains\Toolbox\apps\PyCharm-C\ch-0\182.4505.26\helpers\pydev\_pydev_bundle\pydev_import_hook.py.
So I think this locates the problem, yet I don't know why it arises, why it didn't happen on my other machine, and more importantly, how to fix it?

Technical data:

PyCharm 2018.2.4 (Community Edition)
Build #PC-182.4505.26, built on September 19, 2018
JRE: 1.8.0_152-release-1248-b8 amd64
JVM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o

Windows 10 10.0

Python: 3.7, 3.6.6;

numpy: 1.15.4; 1.14.6

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-27234 bug thread; has some possible workarounds until a fix is released — icemtel, Dec 17 '18 at 20:58

icemtel · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-16T11:16:56.560

It is an open bug; This answer from Jetbrains issue tracker temporarily fixed the problem for me.

open command line

activate conda venv

get the correct PATH value by echo %PATH%

open PyCharm and set new PATH value

for Python console in Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Console | Python Console | Environment variables

for running scripts in Run | Edit Configurations ... | | Environment variables

UPD: The bug fixed in 2019.1

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 14 '19 at 14:41

Last I found from pydev is this workaround, which is like pycharm but from within eclipse IDE as a plugin:

"As a note, right now the workaround can be starting Eclipse from that shell, going to the related interpreter and adding a 'PATH' environment variable to match the one which is expected to run conda (you can force environment variables for a specific interpreter)." Link

This probably can be done the same way for pycharm, ie. launching pycharm from within the correct environment, and explicitly setting the path variable as well.

DLL import error in Pycharm, but works fine outside

2 Answers2