latex in text citations error: citation undefined - latex

Question

I am wanting to do in text citations for my dissertation. I will upload a simplified version of what i am seeing. The issue is that i keep getting "undefined citations" where i only get the citation key out in my pdf irrespective of which compiler i use.
I also keep getting an error saying that the bibliography is empty. But when my friend uses the exact code i have and copies the references and everything into his overleaf environment it works. I could not get it working with miktex and texmaker. Please help
I have checked a lot of articles of what is available and i swear im following what they are doing but i cant get any further
Initially, my idea is to pull the citations from another file because ill be using these citations in multiple documents. I have successfully setup the .bib file which will update as i add more references to Zotero (my reference manager). I tried to pull citations from the .bib file by coding in the file directory, but no luck there.
I then tried to not use the "file directory approach" and just have a references file in the same folder as the .tex file. But that didnt work either.
my code is as follows:
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{latexsym}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[style=ieee]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{refs.bib} %%updated from References.bib
%document headings
\title{Practice}
\author{Justin Smith}
\begin{document}
%Cover Page
\maketitle
\textbf{This page represents the cover page}\newline
\textit{Report will begin here}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\pagebreak
%Introduction
\section{Introduction}
The introduction for the report will be inserted here
\pagebreak
%end Introduction
%Literature Survey
\section{Literature Survey}
\subsection{Referencing Examples}
This section serves to use a reference and understand how to implement references as well as generate a reference list at the end of this report.\\
The citation test \cite{schmidtPreprocessingMethodologyEnhance2019}\\
\pagebreak
%Reference List
\section*{Reference List}
%%\bibliographystyle{IEEE}
%%\bibliography{C:/Users66smi/OneDrive/University of Pretoria/Zotero/MyZoteroLibrary.bib}
%%\printbibliography[title = Reference List]
%%\bibliography{MyZoteroLibrary.bib}
\end{document}
EDIT:
Upon trying to do what #celdor initially said said i still run into the same issue. The following screenshots add to the initial question.
Screenshot showing code and issue directly
Screenshot showing Latex "Configure" settings
From the Log file, the following logs detail relevant warnings
LaTeX Warning: Citation 'schmidtPreprocessingMethodologyEnhance2019' on page 3
undefined on input line 36.
Underfull \hbox (badness 10000) in paragraph at lines 36--37
[]
[3]
LaTeX Warning: Empty bibliography on input line 39.
(Latex test.aux)
LaTeX Warning: There were undefined references.
Package biblatex Warning: Please (re)run Biber on the file:
(biblatex) "Latex test"
(biblatex) and rerun LaTeX afterwards.
Package logreq Info: Writing requests to '"Latex test".run.xml'.
\openout1 = `"Latex test.run.xml"'.
)
Extra information:
The following screenshots are of the Project folder

Answer 1

First, latexsym is an old package superseded by amssymb. I looked at the file and its last update was in 1998!
As to your issues, assuming your text file is main.tex, try the following:
Clean your project folder from all auxiliary *.aux; the best way to do that is to issue latexmk -C in your project folder.
Additionally, remove main.bbl
make sure your *.bib file is in the root project folder
add backend=biber to list of options of biblatex.
Then, run:
pdflatex main.tex # or xelatex main.tex or lualatex main.tex etc.
biber main
pdflatex main.tex # see above
Without *.bbl file, the first run of pdflatex does not produce any reference list and latex may issue a warning. With an old *.bbl file, you will get wrong citations. After the whole sequence is executed, main.pdf should have the correct citation and a reference list.
Remember \bibliography is incompatible with biblatex. The correct macro to create bibliography list is \printbibliography. It will issue \section* in article or \chapter* in report/book for a title and format it according to settings in a document class.
Here, I created References.bib with a dummy article:
#ARTICLE{schmidtPreprocessingMethodologyEnhance2019,
author = {Other, Anthony Norman},
title = {Some things I did},
year = {2014},
journal = {J.~Irrep. Res.},
volume = {1},
number = {1},
pages = {1-10}
}
and run the code as suggested, and frankly I get expected results without any errors!
The full code:
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{amssymb} %superseds latexsym
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[backend=biber,style=ieee]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{References.bib}
%document headings
\title{Practice}
\author{Justin Smith}
\begin{document}
%Cover Page
\maketitle
\textbf{This page represents the cover page}\newline
\textit{Report will begin here}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\pagebreak
%Introduction
\section{Introduction}
The introduction for the report will be inserted here
\pagebreak
%end Introduction
%Literature Survey
\section{Literature Survey}
\subsection{Referencing Examples}
This section serves to use a reference and understand how to implement references as well as generate a reference list at the end of this report.\\
The citation test \cite{schmidtPreprocessingMethodologyEnhance2019}\\
\clearpage
\printbibliography[title = Reference List]
\end{document}
and here's the screenshot:

Answer 2

The answer as suggested by #samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
is that I was not using biber.
To do this on textmaker proceed to Options/Configure Textmaker. A configuration window will appear. Under the Commands Window locate "Bib(la)tex" and set the designation to "biber %". This will solve the issue.
Setting Update
A similar procedure can be followed on texstudios
See the below link on how to make sure textmaker uses this setting for reference.
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/44040/biblatex-biber-texmaker-miktex
thank you for everyones efforts in solving this problem.