How can I enable Windows Explorer (Windows 7 64 bit) to open LabView 8.2.1 LLB files?

[Evgueni]

How can I enable Windows Explorer to open LabView LLB files? I am running LabView 8.2.1 on Windows 7 64 bit. The option “Enable Windows Explorer for LLB Files” in Tools/Options/Environment is unchecked and grayed out.

[JÞB]

LabVIEW 2009 SP1 is the oldest version to offer full support on Win 7 x64.

I would expect a few features would be un-responsive using software developed a few years before the OS (Like thying to predict how Windows explorer's new interface would actually work)  The option is most likely safely shut off for your benefit.

So, The direct answer would be to save those llb's in a version of LabVIEW that isn't 7 years old

[Dennis_Knutson]

An llb is also obsolete and should never be used for development. Even without the problem PhD using such an old version, you should be using projects and an lvlib. Time to convert.

[John_Y1]

You could find a working XP machine, or whatever had LV8 on it, and open the llb using explorer. Copy and paste the files in the llb out to a new folder.  I find this useful for accessing archives of old software eg Agilent 34970A. 

Also the vi s in the llb ought to be accessable from the tools menu within LabView.

[Bob_Schor]

Well, I don't have any LabVIEW 8.2.1 .llb files, but have plenty of LabVIEW 7.0 .llbs, and I have no problems opening them in Windows 7 (they appear in Windows Explorer as a Folder, and when I click on the Folder, it opens to show a bunch of VIs).  Curious ...

Bob Schor

[Bob_Schor]

I just checked, and I'm able to copy the VIs inside the LabVIEW 7.0 .llb files "out" to the desktop in Windows 7.  Of course, the structure of the .llb has probably changed by 8.2.1 ...

Well, I've got a VM that runs XP and has LabVIEW 8.0 installed.  I copied a .llb file from VI.lib to a flash drive and tried to open it on my Windows 7 machine.  It opened, but in LabVIEW 2012 (which is what I'm running).  So something definitely did change.

Bob Schor

[rolfk]

LabVIEW until 7.1 came with a shell extension that could display the content of an LLB in an explorer window.

That was removed in LabVIEW 8.x for  a number of reasons.

- Shell extensions are pretty badly documented, tricky to implement right, and of very limited use since only Windows Explorer and a few explorer replacements can use them. It doesn't add any functionality for most other programs in Windows, since the shell extension are a Windows Explorer thing, and not a Windows core technology.

- With 8.x NI decided that LLBs were pretty old fashioned and their main feature of supporting file names longer than the DOS 8.3 naming was pretty much obsoleted by then, while they didn't allow for more than one level of directory hierarchy. So they decided to depreciate LLBs and declared them a legacy technology that should not be used for new development anymore.

- For the uupcoming 64 bit version of Windows a new shell extension would have been required to allow Explorer to use it.

For all these reasons the LLB shell extension was removed from the LabVIEW installation to further discourage the use of LLBs.

If you have a LabVIEW 7.0 or 7.1 installation on your computer and run 32 Bit Windows you can enable the shell extension in the LabVIEW Options dialog.

[Hooovahh]

Neat-o thanks.  I knew the LLB explorer integration existed at one point but then didn't later and I wasn't sure what the full explaination for it was.  I didn't deal with LLBs much but I admit that the explorer integration did make working with them easier.

[John_Y1]

Thanks for the info.  It make sense of what I have seen...

1) LV 7 on Win XP = can see LLB files in explorer and can copy and paste to a new folder.

2) LV 7 on Win XP can open files in the new folder AND files in the llb as New files or via the tools pallette

3) LV7 on Win 7 = cannot see files (same llb) in explorer

4) only some of the files in the llb are visible in the File | Open dialog or in the tools pallette

5) Some/all of these might give an error that they are LV 8 files and cannot be opened.

6) VI files in the new folder (1 above) will open normally (!)

Suggestion: old driver files, and I am using for this example HP 34970A llb, could be re-posted as say ZIP files

... and pigs will fly...

Happy coding.

[Edjsch]

For what it's worth, I'm using LV 8.5 on a Windows 8.1 64-bit PC. When I navigate to an LLB file in File Explorer (the name was finally changed from "Windows Explorer" and merged with the old "File Manager" from the very old Windows 3.1 of the 1990s) and double-click the LLB, it indeed launches LabVIEW and opens the "LLB Manager", from which I can open any of the contained vi's. So you must be experiencing another problem. Maybe you simply need to associate the LLB files with LabVIEW, which is normally done upon installation of LabVIEW. You know if it's associated correctly by the LV icon. See the attached screenshot png. I hope this helps.

Good luck.

Ed