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    Well I hope you learned that "simply reinstall everything" is not the best strategy to solve problems. miktex can't create the format file, so you need to find out why. Go to the miktex console, settings -> tab format. Select pdflatex and click on build. If it fails you perhaps get the real log-file. Commented Oct 5, 2018 at 6:58
  • Thank you for your answer; the build failed and created a new log, which is too long to add here, I will have to add it to the main post as another edit it seems? Commented Oct 5, 2018 at 7:08
  • Damn, looks like miktex no longer saves the pdftex log somewhere. Open a command line in some empty test folder and then run pdftex --ini --enable-etex pdflatex.ini this should hopefully write a pdflatex.log in this folder. Or you can at least see in the terminal where it stops. Commented Oct 5, 2018 at 7:35
  • @Ulrike Fischer It did not write pdflatex.log into the same folder, but yes there was a new log in the log-folder (which is too long for a comment reply yet again). The terminal output was simply this: Sorry, but pdftex did not succeed. The log file hopefully contains the information to get MiKTeX going again: C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\MiKTeX\2.9\miktex\log\pdftex.log Commented Oct 5, 2018 at 7:49
  • Sorry but in which temporary folder did you try to run the command? But it looks as if pdftex is no allowed to run at all. Do you have some aggressive firewall or virus protection software? Commented Oct 5, 2018 at 7:53