Power Outage now Labview won't start

[antique]

After a power outage when I try to restart LabView I get an error and LabView will not start. I have tried to restore the PC to an earlier time and when I did that LabView would start and run but some of the information for the application was missing. I unrestored the PC and retrieved the vi the application was looking for and now when I try to restore back to the earlier date it will not let me do it. If I restore to the earliest date on the PC now it is after the power outage and I get the same error as before. Would anyone have any suggestions that I might try to fix this issue? I am running LabView 7.1 Full Development on a Dell PC running XP. This system is not networked. Any suggestion would be appreciated.   

Thank you

[Bob_Schor]

You are running 12-year-old LabVIEW Development software on an at-least-8 year old Operating System (no longer supported) -- who knows how old your PC is ...  You had a power outage, and now are having mysterious errors with LabVIEW.

My guess is that some part of this ancient system, either hardware or software, has failed.  Finding and fixing it might be extremely difficult = expensive (in Time and Money).  My recommendation would be to (a) purchase a modern PC (maybe spending no more than $500), (b) install a modern OS (either Windows 7 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit), and (c) install a more recent version of LabVIEW (if you are installing anything older than LabVIEW 2015, be sure you are running Windows 7, not Windows 10).

Bob Schor

[antique]

I understand it is an old system however it ran flawlessly until this issue. Is there a file that it is looking for to start labview that could be repaired or would a reinstall be the best bet? I have tried to reinstall and it just skips the install and goes right to wanting the driver disk inserted.

I used 2015 on most other machines but this one is not connected to the network to keep the company form running scans and updates that always reboots the machine.

Any help would be appreciated.

[altenbach]

Did you scan the disk for errors?

[billko]

Years ago I worked at an IT company that contracted to CSFB to support their trading floor.  We had noticed that none of their computers had UPS in case of power failure.  We kept suggesting that, because trading is critical to their existance, they should invest in UPS for their trading computers.  Of course, it was, "NoNoNo, we're fine," until one day there was a lightning strike to the buiilding that left 3/4 of their trading computers in a non-working state when the power came back on.  Besides the inevitable cussing and shouting and general poor manners towards the very people who were trying to help them that you get from the typical trader, they were losing potentially millions of dollars every second their computers were down (and some of them weere down for DAYS).  You can bet that a UPS solution was installed shortly after.  Maybe that was one of the reasons only the "Credit Suisse" part of the "CSFB" part of the equation persists today.

[Bob_Schor]

How are you backing up your LabVIEW Code (please say you are using Subversion or some other form of Version Control ...)?  What happens if you take your LabVIEW Files (which I understand are in LabVIEW 7.1), copy them to a Flash Drive, go to one of your LabVIEW 2015 machines, copy the files to disk, and try to open them?  Do they "look OK"?  No broken arrows?

If "Yes", then you have the possibility of a repair/reprieve.  I'd still say "Go Modern" -- if you are worried about Updates/Reboots, disconnect from the Network (but this seems pretty counter-productive ...), but you could install XP, LabVIEW 7.1, and be back in business.

Bob Schor

[natasftw]

If you take a VI from 7.1 and open it in 2015, you won't see much of anything.  It's not compatible.

It sounds like the problem is with the IDE before the VIs become part of the conversation.  Is this correct?  If so, then try the reinstallation.  You said it's skipping through.  Take a look at forced reinstallation ( setup.exe /reinstall from the command prompt) or uninstall it before installing.

[RavensFan]

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@natasftw wrote:

If you take a VI from 7.1 and open it in 2015, you won't see much of anything.  It's not compatible.

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How do you figure?  2015 can open up 7.1 VI's.

[natasftw]

Doesn't it require the 8.6 open in the middle? Or. does that happen further back than 7.x?

[RavensFan]

5.1 and older require anything from 6.0 to 8.2 to open it as an intermediate version.