Run-Time Engines 8.2.1 and 8.6 not compatible?

[Technikus]

I ran into a strange problem installing three executables with different versions of the runtime engine. Each executable comes with its runtime engine in an installer, which I used.

App A with runtime 8.2.1
App B with runtime 8.5.1
App C with runtime 8.6

App A installed solely runs perfectly. After installing App B and App C, App A produces a protection fault in lvrt.dll at startup.
After deinstalling and selectively reinstalling the runtimes I was able to isolate the problem. The 8.6 runtime causes the fault in the 8.2 application.

Any ideas what is happening here and how I can avoid this problem?
 
By the way: Why are the runtime engines not visible in the National Instruments Software deinstaller? I had to install them manually using MSIBlast.

[MikeS81]

Hi Technikus,

i can´t say something about the runtime behavior, but normally you can see the run time engine inside the ni popup. Go to system settings and select national instruments software, click change/remove. There you should also find the entries for the installed run time engines.

Mike

[Technikus]

By comparing the National Instruments folder before and after the installation of the 8.6 runtime engine I was able to isolate two DLL-files which are exchanged. When I copy the old files back, my 8.2 application (called App A above) is running again.

These are National Instruments\shared\nicont.dll and nicontdt.dll which seem to be used for a DLL-server ?

Does anyone know what these files are used for? Is there a risk in exchanging the new files of the 8.6 install with the old ones of the 8.2 install?

@MikeS81

That's exactly what I expected, too. I know I could see runtime engines both installed by application installers and by generic runtime downloads of NI on another PC. But the new installers seem to hide these entries in the National Instruments Software deinstaller. Of course one can deinstall them using MSIblast but this is not very user friendly in my opinion. I would like to know why and how these entries are hidden.

[Coq_Rouge]

You can have several run time engine installed. But your problem is that you are using the much the same install script. Therefore some of the support DLLs has been overwritten. Then you build for different versions change the name of the support dir to. See picture

[Technikus]

@t06afre

Thanks for the reply and the picture. But the DLL-files nicont.dll and nicontdt.dll which are overwritten are not in the application's path and they are also not part of the projects! They are part of the RunTime Engines and located in National Instruments\shared in a default install.