Using LabVIEW 7.1 and LabVIEW 2010 on the same PC (Windows XP)

[chembo]

I have LabVIEW 7.1 on a Windows XP 32-bit PC and we plan to upgrade to LabVIEW 2010 soon. A lot of our software is using Traditional DAQ, DAQmx and DeviceNet. We need to use both versions of LabVIEW for some time on the same PC. Is this possible at all?

I installed an evaluation 2010 version and now I don't have DAQ and DeviceNet in LabVIEW 7.1. Any suggestions will be very helpful.

Thanks, Nick

[F._Schubert · Accepted solution]

See this recent thread:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/DAQmx-Version-for-LV-8-2-1-and-2010/td-p/1276594

So maybe you can use virtual machines or different boot partitions.

Felix

[Coq_Rouge]

As long as you do not mix code versions. I can see no problems. I have 7.0 and 2010 on the same PC.

 But read this http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/installation-LV8-6-and-2010/m-p/1431780#M551613

[Dennis_Knutson]

As you can see here, there is no version of DAQmx that is compatible with both 7.1 and 2010. Either separate pc's or two virtual machines.

[Coq_Rouge]

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@Dennis Knutson wrote:

As you can see here, there is no version of DAQmx that is compatible with both 7.1 and 2010. Either separate pc's or two virtual machines.

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I do not think that chart tell the full picture. I have installed and used NIdaq 6.9.3 on Labview 8.6 without any problem. And I have also with success "moved" the same Nidaq version to higher versions by just moving VI and DLLs. So I think it can be tweaked. What kind of NIDaq versions do you need, and what kind of hardware do you have? The problem may be MAX. As you only can have 1 version installed at the same time.

[chembo]

We are using LabVIEW 7.1 on Windows XP machines with Traditional DAQ 7.4.4, DAQmx 8.8 and DNET 1.6.3; MAX version 4.5.  The hardware is usually PCI-6703, PCI-6031E or PCI-6225 and PCI-6527.

[chembo]

Considering all the replies above and some other threads I guess we need to try with virtual machines and update the software gradually to the new LabVIEW and DAQ versions.

Thanks for the help,

Nick

[Bob_Schor]

For what it is worth, I tried having multiple versions of LabVIEW on the same PC.  If you are (very) careful, it is possible to do so, as long as you are only doing development work, i.e. you don't try and install LabVIEW drivers.  However, as I've discovered to my great sorrow (which involved installing and removing various versions of LabVIEW on the same machine probably 5-8 times, eventually leading to wiping the machine and installing WinXP all over again, then only one version of LabVIEW), if you want to actually run your code, particularly if it does anything with hardware, you need to stick to one version!

There's another "gotcha" for those of us working with "older" versions (namely before 2009, though one can "trick" 8.6 if you're careful) -- Windows 7 doesn't "play well" with the older software!

So my development machine runs Windows 7.  I have a VM of Windows XP in which I installed LabVIEW 7, which I use for my "legacy" work -- I use the Win 7 machine for LabVIEW 8.6, 2009, and 2010 development (and only development, see above).

The machine that got "rebuilt", where I wanted to run LabVIEW code for various hardware and potentially various LabVIEW versions, I did a really nutty thing -- I created a quadruple-boot PC!  (It really is a triple-booter, as the Windows 7 system, which is the key step, is "hidden").  To make this work properly, I needed three hard drives in the machine (one for each OS -- I might have figured out how to put two XPs on a single drive, but since I already had the disks, one-OS-per-disk seemed easier).  I'm using Windows 7's Boot Loader to give me the startup choice of which system to use (the message says something like "System for Hardware A", "System for Hardware B", "Test System").  True, you need to do a Restart, but since you're going to be collecting data, it's not such a bad idea to start with a "fresh machine".

[I did think about doing this with Virtual Machines, which would have been much simpler, but I didn't have "virtual drivers" for the hardware!  One piece was actually a USB device, but the other was a proprietary device that plugged into my PC ...]