Labview Download Crashes Computer and Causes Blue Screen

[steven77]

I am trying to download labview on a lenovo 21hk003jus laptop. When I restarted after being prompted the laptop went to the blue screen and would not advance to Windows. To fix this, I had to completely reset my computer and lost all files. I am trying to troubleshoot but it is hard when the issue is so drastic.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Bob_Schor]

This definitely shouldn't have happened!  Can you provide a little more information?

1. How long have you owned this laptop?
2. What operating system are you running?  What Web browser are you using?
3. What version of LabVIEW (version number and whether 32-bit or 64-bit) were you trying to install?
4. From what site did you download LabVIEW?
5. Do you have Administrative rights on this machine?
6. When you tried to install LabVIEW, it should have installed NIPM, the National Instruments Package Manager.  Was this successful?
   
   1. If so, you should have seen two "Choose what to install" screens.  The first lets you install LabVIEW and some high-level programs (such as LabVIEW Real-Time) and Device Drivers (such as NI DAQmx and NI VISA).  What do you remember selecting?
   2. The second screen allows you to install "Additional Features" and configures some options.  Did you "choose everything", "choose nothing", or "pick and choose"?
   3. Did NIPM then start downloading and installing LabVIEW components for you?  About how long did it take?  Did it seem to finish, and ask you to reboot?
7. Is this the Reboot that generated the Blue Screen?  Does it still show a Blue Screen?  What does it say is wrong?

[Needless to say, this should never happen.  Do you have any idea how much free disk space was available?  If this is a fairly new machine, there should be plenty of room ...]

Bob Schor

[Scott_Richardson]

If your Windows laptop is ARM-based and not Intel- or AMD-based, that could be the cause.

Ref:

If the Win11 PCs uses ARM based CPUs, those are not supported and could lead to BSOD.

---

[altenbach]

---

@steven77 wrote:

I am trying to download labview on a lenovo 21hk003jus laptop. When I restarted after being prompted the laptop went to the blue screen and would not advance to Windows..

---

A "download" alone would never prompt you for a restart!!

• Maybe there was also a windows update by coincidence and there is a problem with that.
• Maybe you did more than just "download". Can you clarify?
• You can download any file on any hardware (PC, Mac, Android, Linux, etc.). These are just a collection of bytes. The only real problem would be if you run out of disk space or if the disk hardware has errors. (You can also potentially run into problems if some security software detects a virus like signature in the stream, but that's about it)

[Andrey_Dmitriev]

---

@altenbach wrote:

---

A "download" alone would never prompt you for a restart!!

Well, we all understand that the download itself will not cause a restart or a crash. Perhaps by ‘download’, the author actually meant installation — or maybe this is an AI-generated question; who knows.

Anyway, the problem is more than real and currently present, so let me explain. Since last year, we have been migrating from Dell to Lenovo brand, while still using some legacy tools built with NI software (LabVIEW 2018, VDM, CVI 2020, etc.). When the first engineer came to me and said that after installing one of the tools and restarting, a BSOD occurred, I told him that this old tool had been tested for years — something must be wrong with the laptop. He returned it for replacement, but the problem persisted on the new one. Then another engineer came with the same issue; and more... some of them tried re-imaging their laptops with a fresh OS, and so on.

After a brief investigation, I found that in all cases the root cause was the nipcibrd.sys driver from NI. Such BSOD is described somewhere in kb, too lazy to search.

So, if you have a Lenovo notebook (mine is a ThinkPad P16 Gen 2, type 21FB) with virtualization enabled (is enabled by default in BIOS) + running Windows 11 (24H2) , and you install any NI product that deploys the obsolete PXI Platform Services (2020 at least), then a Blue Screen is guaranteed. 

Ironically, I ‘killed’ my own notebook that way. I installed only NI LabWindows/CVI 2020f4 (the latest version, which supposedly doesn’t include drivers), and guess what — Blue Screen after reboot! But since I’m ‘experienced’, I simply booted into Command Prompt (each time having to enter that huge BitLocker key, thank you), manually deleted nipcibrd.sys — and got ‘Non-bootable device’. So, I ended up taking my laptop, grabbing a bottle of beer, and heading downstairs to the IT department to have it re-imaged as well with OS from the scratch (its not allowed to install OS other than in IT dep).

In general, I don’t even need PXI at all, but I can’t deselect it during installation. Trying to remove it also uninstalls CVI because of dependencies. The only way to stay ‘compatible’ is to download and install the latest PXI Platform 2025Q4 (about a 2 GB installer) or disable virtualization in BIOS.

I can’t confirm whether this also affects LabVIEW specific versions, since we no longer use it actively and have migrated to other programming languages. It’s possible that PXI Platform Services is bundled with other products as well.

It’s hard to estimate the total time our company has lost because of this issue — probably around 30–40 work hours. Not sure who should pay the bill for this disaster: Microsoft, Lenovo, or Emerson?

Anyway, lesson learned — it’s better to use only tools and runtimes that are compatible with the latest operating systems. And interestingly, Dell and HP were not affected at all, no any confirmed cases so far.

[Scott_Richardson]

Might be this: 

BSOD: nipcibrd.sys SECURE_PCI_CONFIG_SPACE_ACCESS_VIOLATION