I don't know how your Qt kits are set up, but I was recently having a problem similar to this one wherein my Qt program would work if I launched it from the terminal, but I would get runtime errors if I ran it from Qt Creator. I realize this is sort of the opposite of your problem, but most people seem to be answering the question "how do I deploy a Qt app on Windows" rather than what you asked (or what I perceive to be your question anyway), and while solving my problem I found this question of yours but was frustrated that nobody had answered really what you asked.
So, my problem was happening because, in the kit I was using, I had set a PATH
, overriding my normal system PATH
. As a result, when the program would run it couldn't find all the DLLs it needed. So, to answer your question of what is different, one major thing that can be different is your Environment
in your kit in your Qt Creator. In my case it made it so PATH
was the difference but I'm sure it could make for more differences as well. See the accepted answer to this post of mine from the problem I'm talking about for detailed instructions on how to get to this Environment
section of your kit and edit it. Yeah I answered my own question and accepted my own answer but it was not my intention when I posted the question :P
Hope this is the sort of information you were looking for :^D