htlatex hangs on a minimal document on Windows (MiKTeX 26.2)

[lchmiel]

Hello,

I have a reproducible problem with htlatex on Windows with MiKTeX 26.2.

I tested it on a fresh single-user MiKTeX installation after a complete reinstall.

Minimal example:

\documentclass{article}
\title{Publikacje}
\author{Leszek J Chmielewski}
\date{}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
Test.
\end{document}

Command used:

htlatex lchmiel_publications.tex "xhtml,charset=utf-8,html5" "" ""

The process seems to hang after the first LaTeX pass. The terminal ends with:

No file lchmiel_publications.aux.
[1] [2]

and then it does not continue.

What I checked:

• ordinary latex compilation works
• the issue also happens for the minimal example above
• reinstalling MiKTeX did not help
• I also tested in a short directory path without spaces, with the same result

So this does not seem to be caused by my document content.

Has anyone seen this on MiKTeX 26.2 on Windows?
Is there a known workaround or some TeX4ht-related component I should verify?

Thank you.

[mathmandan]

This appears to be the same as Issue #1730.

(There, I speculated that the \maketitle command may be part of the problem.)