Fix: User/administrator updates are out-of-sync

Symptom

You see an error message similar to this:

User/administrator updates are out-of-sync

Cause

MiKTeX has been installed system-wide which means that there are multiple installation directories:

• one system wide installation directory (usually C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9 on Windows): for packages installed by a MiKTeX administrator
• at least one per-user installation directory (usually C:\Users\name\AppData\Roaming\2.9 on Windows): for packages installed by the user

These installation directories are out-of-sync if one has been updated, but not the others.

How to fix

In order to synchronize the installation directories, update operations have to be performed:

• by a MiKTeX administrator liable for the system-wide installation directory
• by each MiKTeX user

More info

Also see this GitHub issue: https://github.com/MiKTeX/miktex/issues/262