Buy LabView again 2025Q1, upgrage from 2018SP1 -> Windows 7?

[querzo]

Hi,

we have been using the reliable LabVIEW 2018 SP1 until today.

However, this version is not compatible with Windows 11, which is why we need to upgrade to 2025 Q1.

That said, some of our customers are still using Windows 7

for various reasons (industrial production environments, no internet access, etc.),

so we still need to build applications for Windows 7.

• Is there an option in LabVIEW 2025 Q1 to create and build applications compatible with LabVIEW 2018 SP1?
• Alternatively, is there a runtime version available that still works with Windows 7 and 2025Q1?
• What would you suggest?

thanks a lot for your support!

greetings

[Yamaeda]

"Not compatible" = Not tested.

2018 probably works fine (i'm using 2019 as my daily driver) in W11. The differences between W7 and W11 are small. 

That said i'd say it's about time to think about upgrading to 2018. It is getting a bit long in the tooth (strange expression, teeth don't really keep growing ...) and there's some nice features in the newer versions.

1. No, but you can set a flag that will allow the program to run in newer runtime engines.

2. Nyes, as stated above, it's not tested, but most experience shows it works just fine.

3. LV2018 isn't tested in W11, LV2025 isn't tested in W7 ... depending on your Hardware and you might, or might not want to upgrade. Do a 2025 trial and see if it works.

[thols]

You can have both versions installed and build from LV18 if/when you need, and LV2025 when you need. 

[Yamaeda]

@Thols is correct, but the problem being if you need DAQmx they don't support those two at the same time. It's easy enough to install a Virtual computer and have one version there with appropriate versions.

[querzo]

Hello,

thank you for your response.

I understand that we can install both LabVIEW 2018 and LabVIEW 2025 Q1.

However, after the last upgrade, when we opened all VIs with LabVIEW 2018 SP1 and performed a mass compile, we encountered an issue:

We could not longer open the VIs with LabVIEW 8.6.1.

[thols]

---

@querzo wrote:

Hello,

thank you for your response.

I understand that we can install both LabVIEW 2018 and LabVIEW 2025 Q1.

However, after the last upgrade, when we opened all VIs with LabVIEW 2018 SP1 and performed a mass compile, we encountered an issue:

We could not longer open the VIs with LabVIEW 8.6.1.

---

You can keep go back in SCC history for the older version. I'm not sure of the best practice in SCC for it and I guess it depends on if you will use both versions side by side or not. I guess a branch or separate repository would work in that case. I have not needed to do it much, but for the few times I have needed it, I just went back in SCC history and picked the correct version. If you don't have SCC, now is the time to install Git and SourceTree or something like that.

[Yamaeda]

---

@querzo wrote:

However, after the last upgrade, when we opened all VIs with LabVIEW 2018 SP1 and performed a mass compile, we encountered an issue:

We could not longer open the VIs with LabVIEW 8.6.1.

---

Yes, you can only open VI's in the same or newer versions, and the last save is the lowest version to be used from then on.

You can use File -> Save as previous ... to export an older version, but you can't really work with it like that.

CORRECTION: In 2025 you should be able to r-click your base node in the project and select Save as version or Keep version so you can keep the code base as LV2018 (i don't know if you can keep it as 8.6)

I hope you're using some Source Code Control (SCC) like Subversion or GIT. I use Subversion with the Tortoise client, it gets the job done.