NI LabVIEW causing problems for other software

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Hello everyone, I'm new here and I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post about my issue(I couldn't really find a technical support section and I couldn't contact NI directly either since I couldn't find an email and the Open a service request link in Request Support gives me a Page Error) so feel free to move it if necessary.

Now, my issue isn't exactly concerning a National Istruments software but rather, the damage it has caused to my computer. To put it simply, after I deleted the files of NI(because the uninstaller wouldn't work for whatever reason), it started interfering with a completely unrelated program. More accurately, it has somehow managed to hijack the executable of a game development software that should in no way be related with NI, making it impossible to launch it by having these 2 windows pop up:

I was completely bewildered. How is this software that should no longer exist in my computer be affecting this unrelated program in such a malicious way? As you can see it requests some file that of course doesn't exist because I deleted nearly everything relating to NI LabVIEW or whatever. No matter what I did the software couldn't run because of these 2 that wouldn't go away without me having to go to the task manager. Afterwards I tried disabling all NI services in msconfig but to no avail. After that I decided to delete every single registry file and while that still did not work, it reduced the problem to just having this window pop up:

I've no clue what the hell it's preparing to install... No matter how long I wait or whether I cancel, it still does not do anything. I have to go into task manager to get rid of this.

By the way, the affected software is 001 Game Creator, a game development engine like I said above. I also tried other stuff like uninstalling 001 and reinstalling it, in different drives even, running diagnostics and doing clean ups with CCleaner, Windows Defender, Malwarebytes...and still nothing.

To give you a bit more context to this story: I was given Multisim(and maybe some other software of NI, cannot really remember) to install from my Computer Science university so I didn't have to go through stuff like creating an account here and giving out my personal info and stuff like that, meaning, just downloading it again and trying to uninstall it correctly in hopes that it fixes the issue is not exactly an option... It's been 2 years since I quit CS uni and recently I decided to finally get rid of this software. Let's just say I did not see this coming. . .

I don't know if I'm dealing with a horrible case of corruption here or if the software really is malicious; I'd really appreciate some help...

[rolfk]

You should never delete a software from a computer but uninstall it, unless you deal with an application that you know to be a self contained (so called portable app) install, especially when it’s a complex application like the LabVIEW development environment. 

LabVIEW comes with a lot of auxiliary dependencies that all get installed too, some of them being services and even kernel drivers that in turn depend on other components in the LabVIEW software stack. Simply deleting the whole NI directory will cause Windows’ self repair functionality to kick in at many seemingly unrelated moments by trying to reinstall missing components from locations that you just deleted.

Only the uninstaller knows about all these dependencies and can remove them properly from the system and especially also the registry! Your most simple (although by no means quick) bet is to reinstall LabVIEW and then properly uninstall it. Alternatively you can try a registry cleaner but be careful. Many of the free ones out there are really more scare-ware if they don’t install outright troyans and hard to remove adware and URL redirectors on your machine!

[RTSLVU]

Basically Rolf is right and a little optimistic, I believe you are going to end up having to wipe and reinstall Windows to fix everything.

[johntrich1971]

Deleted my comment. Just reread and realized that you had already done what I was suggesting.

[johntrich1971]

Are you certain that the game maker software wasn't built in LabVIEW? The Runtime Engine is required for executables that are built in LabVIEW.

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OK so, I downloaded the NI Package Installer and reinstalled LabVIEW(only selected LabVIEW under PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS). While that did seem to fix the problem(was able to get the game engine running with no errors), properly removing it through NI Package Manager afterwards just brought it back(2nd screenshot on first post).

As for 001 being built in LabVIEW, I'm almost positive it has no connection to it. It's written in Visual Studio as far as I know.

[Bob_Schor]

As someone who has probably done a hundred installations of LabVIEW for myself, students, colleagues, and teaching labs, I can tell you that the only thing more challenging than installing LabVIEW is uninstalling it.  Whatever you do, do not attempt to remove it "by hand".  You must uninstall it, such as by going to Control Panel, Programs and Features, National Instruments Software, Uninstall All, reboot, repeat.  At some point, you should have only National Instruments Package Manager left, which you use to uninstall itself.

When NIPM first came out, I failed to follow the above advice (I tried to "fix" things by messing with the Windows Registry and deleting files and folders from \Program Files (x86) and \Program Files).  The solution's first step was "Back up Documents", followed by "make a list of installed Software, reformat C: drive, reinstall Windows, reinstall Software, restore Documents".  It took doing this on two of my machines to convince me this was a Really Bad Way to uninstall LabVIEW.

Bob Schor

[RavensFan]

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@[­BLANK­] wrote:

OK so, I downloaded the NI Package Installer and reinstalled LabVIEW(only selected LabVIEW under PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS). While that did seem to fix the problem(was able to get the game engine running with no errors), properly removing it through NI Package Manager afterwards just brought it back(2nd screenshot on first post).

As for 001 being built in LabVIEW, I'm almost positive it has no connection to it. It's written in Visual Studio as far as I know.

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"As far as you know" doesn't mean the same thing as actually knowing for sure.  If you run an executable and it looks for the LabVIEW run-time engine, then the executable was built by LabVIEW.

The second message is looking for "NI Circuit Design .....".   It was probably a secondary toolkit or module to be installed, and it is looking for it on a 😧 drive.  Perhaps when it was originally installed, it came from a drive called d:\ but that drive doesn't exist anymore.

What is this "game design software"?  Where is it from?  Perhaps you need to try reinstalling it.  If it is built in LabVIEW and installed toolkits it needed to run (even though you think it wasn't), and you removed those things because you were getting rid of LabVIEW, you might have just cut out the things that the other software was also using.

[johntrich1971]

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@[­BLANK­] wrote:

By the way, the affected software is 001 Game Creator, a game development engine like I said above. I also tried other stuff like uninstalling 001 and reinstalling it, in different drives even, running diagnostics and doing clean ups with CCleaner, Windows Defender, Malwarebytes...and still nothing.

When you tried uninstalling and reinstalling 001 did you go about the uninstall in the same way that you did the LabVIEW uninstall? I would suggest reinstalling LabVIEW, doing a proper uninstall of 001, doing a proper uninstall of LabVIEW, then reinstalling 001. This may not fix your problem, but it is worth a try. As Ravensfan stated when an executable looks for the LabVIEW runtime engine then it was written in LabVIEW. It will not run without the runtime engine. 

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@[­BLANK­] wrote:

I don't know if I'm dealing with a horrible case of corruption here or if the software really is malicious; I'd really appreciate some help...

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I've been using LabVIEW for well over 20 years and I've never seen anything malicious about it. In my opinion you have corrupted your system by not performing a proper uninstall.

[wiebe@CARYA]

How about using Windows restore point to go back to before the install?

I think that's more or less automatically created and kept for one or two installs? What it actually does has always me a mystery to me, but it did save me a few times. If installing something had really terrible outcome, it does seem to recover from it.

This might be too late now, this is probably best done asap after a problem... It won't delete data, like emails and such, so with careful backups it might still do some good.