Un-install woes

[Frozen]

/rant on

I recently got a new work laptop with Win11 and had to re-install LabVIEW (32 bit LV 2020 SP1 f1) The install was pretty bumpy with several blue screens. I eventually got everything sorted out and LV was successfully running on my new laptop. After a month or two I launched NI-MAX to check the install SW for the next poor sucker that got upgraded to Win 11 and it got stuck. I had to kill the NI-MAX process in the task manager. After some investigation, we discovered LV2020 was not supported in Win11 😭

After some investigation into what was supported and what we have licenses for, I installed LV2022 64bit. This also produced some blue screens during the install IIRC. I eventually got LV installed and working. Unfortunately, NI-MAX was still unable to run on my computer.

After several weeks of living without NI-MAX, I attempted to un-install *all* LV SW to start "fresh". Yes, I used NIPM. This did not go smoothly either. After waiting close to 2 hours, I canceled the un-install process (probably my first mistake). After waiting over an hour for the uninstall process to stop, I killed it as well (probably my second mistake).
Next came over a day of fighting with NIPM to un-install the NI SW. I kept getting this error:

An error occurred while creating a process to run command '"C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\Shared\SSP Notifier\SSP Notifier.exe" -RemoveTask'.

At some point in my research, I found the KB "Removing NI Software Hidden Packages and Folders Through NI Package Manager" [link:https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA03q0000019kk2CAA&l=en-CA]
I then started uninstalling several packages at a time until I narrowed the list down to several packages (15 or so out of close to 100?) that could not be removed due the above error. Eventually, I had to repair ( or maybe it was a re-install since that path did not exist) the SSP notifier package. That allowed me to finally remove all NI SW through NIPM. 😅

After that, I un-installed NIPM as well (through Window "Installed apps").

After that horrific ordeal, I was very sad to see that remnants of NI SW still remained on my system.

Location	Files	Folders	Size
%UserProfile%\Documents\LabVIEW Data	961	64	22.6	MB
%localappdata%\National Instruments	181	11	62.7	MB
%localappdata%\National_Instruments	4	6	4.7	KB
C:\ProgramData\National Instruments	9705	393	2.3	GB
C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments	2507	1086	321.2	MB
C:\Program Files\National Instruments	279	172	116.4	MB
TOTALS	13637	1732	~2.3 GB

Now I am wondering if I should clean up some of the folders? Over 13K files and close to 2K folders!! 😮

/rant off

Has anyone un-installed NI SW lately? Does LV2024 or LV2025 clean up after itself better?

Now to re-install LV2022 64bit... wish me luck!

[Bob_Schor]

With the (sad) history you've had, my advice would be to leave the NI-branded folders alone, particularly if you are re-installing.  When the new files come in, they'll (probably) go into those same NI folders, and will override all (or almost all) of what's there.  You might have a few MB (or even a GB) of "unneeded stuff", but that's a small price to pay for the pain of reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows, all your Apps, you (backed-up) Profile, etc. 

One suggestion if you need to do another re-install -- "Control Panel" is your friend!  You can run it by clicking the Start rectangle (on Windows 10, it's the rectangle to the left of the Taskbar at the bottom) and typing "Control Panel", which should pop it up.  Click "Programs and Features", and find "NI Software".  This will pull up NIPM which will let you click "All" and "Remove" (be sure to unselect "Products Only".

Do "NI Software" first.  After that (and rebooting), do "NI Package Manager".  Finally, go back "one mo' time" and (again) remove "NI Software", which often "appears" after the NIPM-managed software is all gone.

Bob Schor

[Frozen]

Thanks Bob, I was hopping that  you would chime in given your many posts about the subject 😁

I have already double and triple checked "installed apps" through the regular "settings-> Apps -> Installed apps" as well as the old control panel route. Nothing NI is listed in either location.

[Bob_Schor]

I will (guiltily) admit that after I do a "complete uninstall" of NI Software, I will do a search for folders (not files) named "National Instruments", especially those "high up" in the C: "hierarchy" (for example, I keep hands-off anything found in a "C:\Windows" folder).  Also, if you do anything with FPGA, and you compile on your PC (instead of an external Compile Farm), there's a pretty large folder (whose name I forget, but I'm pretty sure it is on the root of C:) that you can delete, as if you re-install LabVIEW with FPGA, you'll get that FIle and its associated files back.

[In case you are wondering, I'm beginning to run into the conundrum brought about by Windows 11 replacing Windows 10, and the narrow range of LabVIEW "editions" that can run on Windows 11 (not to mention NIPM's more aggressive removal of older versions of LabVIEW).  Talk about "un-Planned Obsolescence" ...

Bob Schor