Experiences installing LV 2017 or greater with existing LV installations...

[billko]

Hi everyone:

I'm trying to evaluate what kinds of impacts installing LV 2017 or greater would have on a Win10 PC with previous LV installs.  Anyone have any thought on this?  I know there were issues when LV 2017 first came out (and I believe they persisted somewhat with LV 2018 as well), but hopefully a combination of workarounds, installation strategies, and bug fixes has rendered the specter of installing LV 2017 + over previous installs somewhat less daunting?

I'd like to hear of victories as well as defeats.

Thanks!

[Mark_Yedinak]

I haven't run into issue on the few machines that I have upgraded with the exception of one. My licenses got a bit messed up but I think that had more to do with a changing serial number than the install itself. I had various components locking onto older serial numbers even when I tried to activate them with the updated serial number.

[Bob_Schor]

LabVIEW 2017 "on top of" LabVIEW 2016 (I'm not sure I tried this with, say, 2015 or 2014 as the "older" version) was a disaster for me.  I was successfully able to remove it from one Window 7 PC, and got rid of it on my two Windows 10 machines only by reformatting the hard drive, reinstalling Windows, and reinstalling everything else.

I've since only run Windows 2017 (rarely) and Windows 2018 (not so rarely) in VMs where they are the only system installed.  I'm pretty sure I now know how to safely remove them (so as not to have to reformat).  This week, I got a new Windows 10 box that I've just added my "Commonly used programs", including LabVIEW 2016.  I'm planning (maybe tomorrow) to try to install LabVIEW 2018 "on top of" it, and will post back here my results.  I'm "cautiously optimistic" ...

Bob Schor

[JÞB]

I have been blessed. The 8-Ball machine has been running LabVIEW 2014:2018 on Win 10 with never a problem!  Of course, I'm on a Software Reference Library Lease on a single seat.  Volume License Manager has has a few hiccups of late.

On the sad side, I did need to uninstall a bunch of stuff Pre-2014 (My old laptop only has a 0.5Tb hard drive AND I NEED a solid state drive)

[pallen]

I  installed LV 2018 onto a Windows 10 system that already had LV 2015 with RT, DSC and Vision modules installed.  

So far I haven't seen anything particularly weird.

Updates and plugins seem to work fine so far.  

[Bob_Schor]

Just in the process of installing LabVIEW 2018 (with LVRT, VDM, DAQmx, VISA, PXI, VAS) on a new Windows 10 box "on top of" LabVIEW 2016 with the same modules.  During the installation of LabVIEW 2018, I got the (now-familiar) "You do not have sufficient privileges to install NI Network Discovery", and a message "Network Discovery 2018 has failed".  I chose to continue, looked like the rest of LabVIEW 2018 installed (with a note at the end about the error), VIPM installed, then I killed the installation.  I rebooted, restarted, it quickly "finished" the Install of LabVIEW and VIPM, and is now happily working on the Real-Time Module.  I'm now "less cautiously" (= "more enthusiastically") optimistic that this installation will proceed, and I'll (at last) have a single machine with LabVIEW 2016 and LabVIEW 2018.

Bob Schor

P.S. -- if it fails, you can be sure I'll come back and start whining ...

[billko]

PS - I'm not ignoring anything here; at this point, I'm just observing.  Thanks for the responses so far.

Thanks, especially to you, Bob, for chronicling your adventures for me.

[Bob_Schor]

You are welcome, Bill.  Of course, there's an interesting "final twist".  When I started the installation of LabVIEW 2018 (on top of an installed-and-running-and-activated LabVIEW 2016), the Installer said "Looking for licenses used to install LabVIEW" and "found" (and reported to me) the license I am using (same license for 2016 and 2018).  I install LabVIEW 2018 (takes two tries, as described above), do the final Reboot, then start LabVIEW for the first time.

It says "There are no valid licenses", and shows me a list of 5 (I think) things that need a "Serial Number".  What Serial Number?  As a guess, I enter (for each one) the same License number the Installer looked up and "knew" (by looking up my account?), and that worked!  But, c'mon, I never had this nonsense when going from 2012 to 2013 to 2014 to 2015 to 2016 ...  [As I've related before, I never went to 2017 ...].

Oh, well, I now have a new PC with my favorite LabVIEW version (2016) and "something New" (LabVIEW 2018) both installed and (probably) working -- I haven't (yet) done much with LabVIEW 2018 on this machine ...

Bob Schor

[Bob_Schor]

MEA CULPA!  I was completely wrong about the Peaceful Coexistence of LabVIEW 2018 "on top of" LabVIEW 2016!  I am currently uninstalling all NI Software, after which I will re-install only LabVIEW 2016 (which is the version I'm using the most, except for answering queries from this Forum, when I use a VM with only 2018).

I was "fooled".  Both LabVIEW 2016 and 2018 appear to run, and can open VIs, edit, etc.  However, when I plugged in a USB-6212 and tried to run a Project written in LabVIEW 2016, there was no device showing in MAX (even though I heard the little "USB Plugged In" sound).  Called NI Support, found that a USB 6002 identified itself as a "USB\VID<gobbledegook>" (which means "something is broken".  I looked at the NI Services that were listed -- there should be around 20 in my experience, but there were only 11.  I've seen this before, it is a sure sign of Bad Installation, cured by an Uninstall/Reinstall cycle.

This is pretty egregious.  It is also pretty easy to replicate.  I'm going to continue working with NI AEs to document this problem and maybe, at last, get someone interested in getting NIPM (which I suspect is the culprit) to not mangle "before-and-after" installations.

Bob "P.O.-ed" Schor

[deceased]

Oh how I wish I had seen this thread earlier. I got a new laptop on to which I needed to install 2011 / 2015 (with Vision RT FPGA) to support existing projects.

No problems here, all tested and working.

For an upcoming project I decided it would be nice to try the latest and greatest (2018). What a mistake.

It corrupted my 2011 RIO stuff, which I could not repair or reinstall with any tricks, or the help of tech support. Wasted a week trying to fix it, then another nuking the laptop and starting over with 2011 and 2015 only.

My advice, if anyone is going to "upgrade", take a full image of your HDD first!

0xDEAD