Qt 4.8 mingw version brings up modal windows error message every startup

Qt 4 qmake doesn't link in the mingw runtimes statically. Therefore trying to run qmake -query on every Qt Creator startup results in one or multiple message boxes

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qmake.exe - System Error
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The program can't start because libwinpthread-1.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
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OK
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(that is, if the mingw runtime dll's aren't in the default path of Qt Creator. This got worse now that we're actually trying to run qmake with the environments of all compatible toolchains until it succeeds ...