Tip when Installing LabVIEW 2020 after Newer Version

[TomOrr0W]

I have LabVIEW 2021 SP1 (64-bit) and LabVIEW 2025 Q3 (64-bit) installed.  When installing LabVIEW 2020 SP1 (64-bit) afterwards, having NI-Sync Support for LabVIEW 2020 (64-bit) checked (it is checked by default) prevents the entire install.  You can avoid this by just unchecking NI-Sync Support.

Figuring out which "Additional items you may wish to install" was preventing the install was annoying (another poor UX choice in NIPM; had to uncheck all and then recheck them one-by-one, pressing next/back for each one to test it), so I put it here in case anyone else ends up in the same circumstances.

[Bob_Schor]

Possibly because of having two versions (10 and 11) of Windows, two versions (32-bit and 64-bit) versions of LabVIEW, and the "five-year backward compatibility" rule has certainly make installations with multiple versions of LabVIEW more problematic.  Not to mention whether you install "oldest-first" (which is generally a single install, since you are "adding the newest") or "newest-first", which takes advantage of the "5-year backward compatibility" hook in LabVIEW (but which requires a "Uninstall/reinstall" cycle, not that much fun).

But the bright side is in 2-3 years, we'll only have one Windows OS to worry about ...

Bob Schor

[Frozen]

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@Bob_Schor wrote:

But the bright side is in 2-3 years, we'll only have one Windows OS to worry about ...

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Are we all switching to Linux? 😁

[rolfk]

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@Frozen wrote:

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@Bob_Schor wrote:

But the bright side is in 2-3 years, we'll only have one Windows OS to worry about ...

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Are we all switching to Linux? 😁

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If they put some love into the Linux version and make the awful screen redraw bugs go away, I'm switching over. I installed 2025Q3 on an Ubuntu 22.04 system in VmWare and although I had to enter a command line or two, installation was a breece and MUUUUUUUUCH faster than on Windows. Application startup is snappy, and so is editing in general.

But the screen redraw is really bad, even worse than LabVIEW on Windows 3.1 when it was having regular problems to update the diagram and front panel properly due to different graphic drivers.

Some of the common problems:

- The menu bar is not invalidated properly when resizing the window, resulting in artefacts from the connector pane remaining visible in the menu bar.

- Diagram update has trouble to properly redraw several program structures. Typically it only draws parts of the While loop border and even forcing a redraw of the whole diagram only will fix it for a moment until it redraws one more time, but it is not only the While structure, but that one is the most obvious right away.

It's really mostly cosmetic issues, but if you can't see half of the diagram properly when editing a VI this is very cumbersome.