Registration Wizard Running at 100% CPU After LabVIEW Installation

[m3nth]

After installing LabVIEW and rebooting, the Registration Wizard runs at startup [silently in the background], doesn't do anything noticeable, and eats 100% of a CPU core... i.e., that core runs at 100% CPU usage. 

This has happened for quite awhile now, since maybe the 2010 or 2011 versions of LabVIEW, and has finally annoyed me enough to post since it is not being fixed.  Obviously others have had the same issue as well, which has gone unresolved... see this post:   NI registration wizard at 50% CPU

In those cases they are reporting 50% or 25% CPU because that's what happens when you have a dual or quad-core machine with a single core fully utilized... it's eating 100% of a single core but gets divided by 2 or 4 on a dual or quad-core system and shows up as 50% or 25% processor usage.

The workaround of course is just to keep the Registration Wizard from starting at boot, but really... having to fix this every time LabVIEW is installed... not ideal.

I'm running Win7 x64.  I have the Registration Wizard still running with trillions of CPU cycles racked up after my last LabVIEW install.  I can collect logs or data or a stack dump or whatever... just let me know what will be useful information for NI to try and correct this.

[MCOTO]

Hi m3nth,

Which specific version of LabVIEW are you using right now? (any patch of service pack?) I found some corrective actions for an issue very similar, but I need to know more details about your system.

Regards,

[m3nth]

LabVIEW 2012 Professional, Version 12.0 (32-bit)

I'm not sure how I wound up with the 32-bit version installed [assuming there is also a 64-bit version available which would match my OS]

[MCOTO]

Hi m3nth,

I checked for the corrective action, but it was for a previous version of LabVIEW. However, I found a work around that can be useful. You can rename the RegistrationWizard.exe to RegistrationWizard.exe.BAK following these steps:

1. Go to Windows Task Manager. Click Processes tab.
2. Look for RegistrationWizard.exe and perform a right click. Click on Open files location.
3. Go to RegistrationWizard and perform a right click. Go to Properties and rename it as RegistrationWizard.exe.BAK

Regarding to the question about OS, there is no problem if you run a 32-bit SW in a 64-bit system.

Regards,

[m3nth]

As stated in my initial post, the workaround is just to keep the Registration Wizard from starting at boot--  renaming the executable is just one way to do that. The cleaner method is to remove the auto-run registry entry altogether (@ HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run) using either the registry editor or a utility like Microsoft autoruns-- I'm guessing that's more trouble than it's worth to walk people through when they run into this issue, so the easy/sloppy way is just to keep Windows from finding the file it's looking for each time the computer boots.

Unless you can confirm that a new copy of RegistrationWizard.exe is not installed with each LabVIEW installation, I don't think this is a solution to the issue of having this recur after every new LabVIEW installation or upgrade.

[LaRisa]

Hi m3nth,

Thank you for reporting this. While these workarounds resolve the issue short-term, R&D does not consider these workarounds to be good long-term solutions. We now have a Corrective Action Request to investigate and resolve this problem.

We'll update this thread when we're able to release a version of NI Registration Wizard that resolves the problem.

[LaRisa]

Hi m3nth,

After some more investigation, we found that one problematic component of Registration Wizard is the Network Discovery expert that leverages a 3rd party component called mDNSResponder. Up until recently we were shipping a really old version that could cause the CPU on some systems (mainly Windows 7) to peg at 50-100% CPU depending on your number of cores. Upgrading NI System Configuration to version 5.3.3 should resolve this. Can you please let me know if you're still seeing this behavior after upgrading to NI System Configuration 5.3.3, available at the link below?

http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/3560/lang/en 

[m3nth]

Troubleshooting steps as follows:

• Rebooted to reduplicate issue prior troubleshooting
• Check Registration Wizard --> 100% CPU
• Kill Registration Wizard
• Install NI System Config 5.3.3
• Default options selected, next next next
• Installer completed with no errors

• Restart computer
• Check Registration Wizard --> 100% CPU
• Kill Registration Wizard
• Restart Registration Wizard using previously-executed command line
• "C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\Shared\RegistrationWizard\Bin\RegistrationWizard.exe" -autoDiscover 1 -displayIfNoneFound 0 -displayRegisterOptions 1 -sleepIfNoneFound 0 -locale 1033
• Nominal CPU usage for approximately 10 to 12 seconds, then 100% CPU usage
• Kill Registration Wizard again
• Repeat process above, same results --> goes to 100% after 10+ seconds
• Start MAX
• Find NI System Configuration in Software
• 5.3.3f0, C:\Windows\SysWOW64\nisyscfg.dll
• Files on disk
• system32\nimdnsResponder.dll:  v214.3.1f4
• NI\Shared\mDNS Responder\nimdnsNSP.dll:  v214.3.1f4
• NI\Shared\NI Network Discovery\niDiscExp.dll: v5.3.0f0

Call Stack for thread that's executing 100% CPU:

1. ntoskrnl.exe!KeWaitForMultipleObjects+0xc0a
2. ntoskrnl.exe!KeAcquireSpinLockAtDpcLevel+0x732
3. ntdll.dll!ZwQueryObject+0xa
4. wow64.dll!Wow64EmulateAtlThunk+0x1eed
5. wow64.dll!Wow64SystemServiceEx+0x1a8
6. wow64cpu.dll!TurboDispatchJumpAddressEnd+0x2d
7. wow64.dll!Wow64SystemServiceEx+0x1ce
8. wow64.dll!Wow64LdrpInitialize+0x429
9. ntdll.dll!RtlIsDosDeviceName_U+0x24c87
10. ntdll.dll!LdrInitializeThunk+0xe
11. ntdll.dll!NtQueryObject+0x12
12. kernel32.dll!GetHandleInformation+0x3d
13. WS2_32.dll!WSAUnhookBlockingHook+0xb0c
14. WS2_32.dll!WSASetServiceW+0x345f
15. niDiscExp.dll!createNIMDNSSysApiExpert+0x22cf
16. niDiscExp.dll!nde_InitialDiscoveryComplete+0x90ad
17. MSVCR90.dll!_endthreadex+0x44
18. MSVCR90.dll!_endthreadex+0xd8
19. kernel32.dll!BaseThreadInitThunk+0x12
20. ntdll.dll!RtlInitializeExceptionChain+0x63
21. ntdll.dll!RtlInitializeExceptionChain+0x36

My conclusion would be that the updated NI System Configuration software installed correctly, but that there is still an mDNSresponder issue, judging by item 15 of the call stack.

Are you sure that installing the NI System Configuration 5.3.3 would have installed all of the necessary files required to fix this issue?  Are there lower-level file version numbers I can check to guarantee that I have the latest files installed correctly?  I listed the 3 DLL version numbers above that I thought may be relevant.

[LaRisa]

Thank you for all the details you've included. While the developers investigate further, I just wanted to find out if you'd be open to sending us your machine. We could send you a replacement machine imaged with whatever software you need in the meantime. I don't know yet if the developers will request your machine, but since we obviously haven't gotten to the bottom of this with the systems we've tested so far, I wanted to find out if borrowing yours was an option. If you agree, we'll take that discussion offline to work out the details.

Thanks,

[JoshuaP · Accepted solution]

What happens if you rename NI\Shared\NI Network Discovery\niDiscExp.dll to NI\Shared\NI Network Discovery\niDiscExp.bak and then relaunch the wizard?