Plugins Manager won't open on Windows portable (5.0.0)

[fern185]

Describe the bug

When trying to open the Plugins Manager on Windows portable fails with the following error message:

ERROR: Qt GUI error
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8 codec' can't decode byte 0xb0 in position 37: invalid start byte

In addition, a taskbar icon appears each time this is tried (see screenshot below for details).

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behaviour:

1. Run plover.exe portable (I am running it from a USB drive)
2. Click on the "Plugins Manager" button (or select the "Tools:Plugin Manager" menu item).
3. See error

Expected behavior

The Plugins Manager window should open.

I appear to be able to install plugins manually using the Windows instructions (https://plover.wiki/index.php/Plugins#How_to_Install_Plugins). I installed the plover-lapwing-aio and plover-auto-reconnect-machine plugins this way, and they appear to work as expected within Plover (e.g., my machine reconnects automatically, the leftmost upper key generates Lapwing's "#" rather than Plover's "S", the expected dictionaries appear in the list, etc.).

Screenshots

Each time I try to open the Plugins Manager, an icon appears in the taskbar. The attached screenshot shows an example where I tried this twice; the leftmost two icons are the ones associated with these attempts. Each icon stayed about a minute or two before disappearing. Hovering over or clicking either icon did not appear to have any effect.

Operating system

• OS: Windows 11 Pro (version 24H2, build 26100.6899))
• Plover Version 5.0.0

Hardware

If applicable, let us know what machine you're experiencing the issue with and how it's connected to Plover, as well as a screenshot of the machine configuration inside Plover.