LabVIEW 8.6.1 crashes with VIs built in LabVIEW 7.1.1

[midam]

Hi experts,

We recently upgraded to latest LabVIEW 8.6.1. We've been told that VIs built in 7.1.1 will be opened in 8.6.1 without any grief but that seems to be not true.

We have a big test software built in 7.1.1 and when I try to open it with 8.6.1, it crashes. Rewritng in 8.6.1 would be very painful and probably the last thing one wants to do.

Could anyone out there help me on this?

Steve

[RavensFan]

Are there any error messages associated with the crash?  If you restart LabVIEW, does it ask you to investigate the error?

Do you have any versions of LabVIEW before 8.6 you could try opening it in to see if they crash also?

[midam]

Yes, it is asking whether to investigate internal errors. It appears a lot of .cpp file got screwed up.

This was a rare upgrade for our company so no other version of LabVIEW is available unfortunately.

 Thanks.

Steve

[pallen]

These things can be tricky to sort out.  You're going to want to make sure to keep a copy of original VIs that you don't mess with though. 

One thing to try would be a mass compile on all the VIs before attempting to open them.  It might help.  

Aside from that, sometimes copying and pasting the BD from a "main" VI and dropping it into a new one can also help with some of those weird .cpp errors.  

The trick is finding which one is the culprit.  

[midam]

I just tried both ways and found it didn't help. Even mass compling crashed during its compiling. Thanks.

[pallen]

You're definately seeing something that shouldn't happen.  I've opened a number of 7.1 VIs in later versions without problems, so it should work. 

Do you have any problems opening your VI in 7.1.1?  

Can you open any older VIs in your new version?

I'm including a little test VI I just made in 7.1  It should open for you no problem.

If you have a support contract, you should definately make a phone call to tech support to see what they have to say. 

You could upload your VI here, and someone else could try to convert it.  I've got one machine here with 8.6.1 and the latest patches on it.  Alternatively, if you need to have a Non Disclosure Agreement with your code NI might be able to help you out there as well.  

I'm not sure if you've tried re-installing LabVIEW or not.  But you might want to have a look for the MaxBlast tool to clean things up first.  (edit....I couldn't find that tool anywhere so I'm uploading it again)  

[Matthew_Kelton · Accepted solution]

You may need to go directory by directory and open up sections of VIs to try to narrow down which one is causign the crash.  Most likely, not all of the VIs are causing the crash.  You may have one that is causing the problem.  Once you narrow it down, you may find the VI(s) are extremely simple and just do the rewrite of those.  If it is a more complicated one, then you can see if there is any particular reason why it might be causing the crash.

I've seen situations where one wire has a "corruption" on it, and simply deleting and recreating the wire solves the problem.  Sometimes copying all the code from one VI to a new VI solves the problem.  I am assuming you have verified that you can still open all the code in 7.1.1 without crashing.

[midam]

Thanks Matthew. As you suggested, I could narrow down to few VIs out of hundreds which were causing the crash. After rewriting these, which was a bit painful, now I can open my whole code in 8.6.1 version. It's really pussling what was the cause of that crash but I'm now happy man!