LabVIEW installer is not installing the NI-VISA Run Time Support 4.2

[Edjsch]

I hope someone can help. We have a LabVIEW application exe (V8.5 - I know it's old) called "MESURgauge Plus" and its installer built with the Application Builder. The installer works fine, even on Windows 11, but one customer is having the following problem:

When he runs our installer on his work / lab PC, the installer dialog that pops up at the start shows our software but NOT the "NI-VISA Run Time Support 4.2" item. Then when launching our program he gets the following error message:

I have searched and searched and cannot find a solution.

Additional Information:

1. Our software installer works fine on his personal computer.

2. His work computer did have some NI software on it, which he has uninstalled. His broken MESURgauge program has also been uninstalled. But then when running our installer, the installer obviously thinks the LabVIEW Run-Time Engine is already installed (most likely a newer one), so it will not install ours, the required one, which should be installed here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\Shared\LabVIEW Run-Time\8.5

He doesn't have that entire "National Instruments" folder tree.

Does anyone have any ideas on resolving this, short of re-installing Windows on his work computer?

Thank you so much!!!

Ed

[Edjsch]

Some screen shots:

This is the normal installer popup, as appears on his personal PC:

This is on his work PC after uninstalling all NI software and all our software:

Notice that the NI-VISA Run Time Support 4.2 item is not being installed.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thanks all in advance!

Ed

[rolfk]

You're getting mislead by the presence of Runtime in both items.

The error message talks about the LabVIEW 8.5 Runtime Engine

The Installer dialog offers to install NI VISA 4.2 Runtime Support on the first dialog. The reason that it is not present on the second is almost certainly because the customer already has some (newer) version of NI VISA Runtime installed on his computer. NI VISA Runtime can only exist once on a system and the installer of course never downgrades an already present installation.

You need to find out why it can't find the LabVIEW Runtime Engine.

You may want to send them this link and ask them to install the runtime engine explicitly.

If he had NI software installed and removed them, then there might still be some registry settings that might tell the installer that the software is already present. Maybe he will need to go through these steps: https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z000000P7P4SAK

[billko]

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@rolfk wrote:

You're getting mislead by the presence of Runtime in both items.

The error message talks about the LabVIEW 8.5 Runtime Engine

The Installer dialog offers to install NI VISA 4.2 Runtime Support on the first dialog. The reason that it is not present on the second is almost certainly because the customer already has some (newer) version of NI VISA Runtime installed on his computer. NI VISA Runtime can only exist once on a system and the installer of course never downgrades an already present installation.

You need to find out why it can't find the LabVIEW Runtime Engine.

You may want to send them this link and ask them to install the runtime engine explicitly.

If he had NI software installed and removed them, then there might still be some registry settings that might tell the installer that the software is already present. Maybe he will need to go through these steps: https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z000000P7P4SAK

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One wonders how the customer and your company agreed to this mashup of unsupportable software.  If something odd happens, NI won't be there to help you.

[Edjsch]

rolfk,

Thank you for your reply. I did notice that the error message when trying to run our LabVIEW application said "Unable to locate the LabVIEW Run-Time Engine" but the installer was not going to install the "NI-VISA 4.2 Run Time Support". Since that was the only discrepancy for working on the personal computer but not working on the work computer, I made an assumption that they might be related.

"You need to find out why it can't find the LabVIEW Runtime Engine." Yes, that's the key. But apparently this is not so easy. (As I said in my post, the customer claimed they uninstalled our software, then their existing NI software through Control Panel Programs and Features before attempting to re-install our software, but that did not resolve the problem.) I will send then your link and see how that works out. I'll let you know.

But one question: I did come across that RTE version, V8.5.1, but was not sure if it would work when the exe was developed with V8.5. Do you know?

Thanks again,

Ed

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

In case you need the 8.5 RTE it can be found here:

http://download.ni.com/#support/labview/windows/runtime/

-AK2DM

[Edjsch]

Thank you! (When I searched ni.com I only saw this web page: https://www.ni.com/en-us/support/downloads/software-products/download.labview-runtime.html#477317

But that only went back to 2009.) Much appreciated.

(Do you know if 8.5.1 would work with LV 8.5?)

-Ed

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

Not sure about the details of 8.5.1 working.

-AK2DM