is there a minumum set of windows services that Labview can run under?

[RBFOLS]

I need more cpu resources to run my VI, is there a list of Windows resources that I can turn off that will not effect the VI?

[altenbach]

You are probably appoaching this from the wrong end. What makes you think that windows services are to blame that your application is not running to specs?

Besides obvious things such as automatic windows updates and antivirus that you might want to turn off, typical services use very little resources and are thus irrelevant. (and make sure that you computer is clean. For example spyware infections can be very demanding on resources).

Your labview application easily gets 95+ % of the CPU resources (different computers typically differ by much more than that in CPU power!), and if this is not enough, wait a months and buy a computer that is 5% faster. 😄 If you constantly need to run your CPU at the red line, something in your code is probably designed wrong. (e.g. overly tight polling loops). You cannot fix a poorly written program by simply throwing more CPU power at it. This is like trying to put a Formula One engine on a tricycle in order to go faster. 😮

You don't give enough informations, but do you need more raw CPU power or do you need more deterministic operations? For the second case, maybe LabVIEW RT might be a better choice. For the first, you might need to optimize your algorithms. Sometimes you can gain orders of magnitude in speed by rewriting important code sections for better inplaceness. Also avoid expensive alternatives, e.g. don't use value property nodes in inner loops, etc.

Does your application involve heavy computations or hardware IO, or both?

Do you use all CPU cores?

Have you done profiling?

Can you describe in more details what your applications is doing and what you perceive as the bottlenecks. 🙂

Message Edited by altenbach on 08-22-2009 09:12 AM

[eichlerjw · Accepted solution]

Hi 

I would also like to know if there is a minium set of services that LabVIEW actually needs. Not because my VI's need more CPU, but because I don't see why I need to have 10 NI services running in the background even when LabVIEW is not running.

The list of NI services which I have running on my Vista 64 bit system when LabVIEW is not running is:

1 tagsrv.exe national instruments variable engine 9,996k

2 nisvcloc.exe NI service locator 0,920k

3 nipalsm.exe NI-PAL service manager 3,492k

4 nipalsm.exe NI-Pal service manager 7,468k

5 nipalsm.exe NI-Pal service manager 21,356k

6 nimdnsResponder.exe National Instruments Zeroconf service 1,924k

7 niLxiDiscovery.exe National instruments LXI Discovery Service 1,592k

8 nidmsrv.exe nidmsrv 3,492k

9 lktsrv.exe iktsrv.exe 3,480k

10 lkads.exe lkads 3,124k

TOTAL 56,844K

Does anybody know which of these I actually need? I do not plug any DAQ hardware into this machine. It is purely used for writing vi's which are then transferred to another machine where they are tested. I have LabVIEW 8.6 and DAQmx installed.

Thanks.

J 

[smercurio_fc]

This questions comes up often. If you do a search you will find information on most of those services. That said, I have most of those services disabled on my computer. NI-PAL, for instance is used by NI-VISA, though I don't believe it's required for just development. I've had it disabled in the past with no issues. I recently enabled it only because I was doing some fiddling in MAX and that required the service to be running. I do have the NI Service Locator service always running, as the Example Finder and online Help use it to call up VIs.

[eichlerjw]

ok, sound

I'll have a search on the individual services. One complication is that I am simulating (using MAX) the devices which will be acquired from/controlled by my vi's. I have noticed that if I disable all the the services listed above I get errors when I use read from or write to spreadsheet functions when I run the vi's in my simulated environment.

I'll have a look. Thanks for your help.

cheers

J 

[smercurio_fc]

If you are simulating devices then you will definitely need to have additional service running. I think you would need at least NI Configuration Manager and NI Device Loader. At least, that's what I have running on my machine for simulated DAQmx devices.

[Mr._Jim]

It's funny that you should mention that, because I once disabled several of the services and for the longest time all was well.  One day, though, I tried to simulate a device in MAX and it wouldn't work.  I was scratching my head for days and starting to get really frustrated, and then I realized it was because I had disabled the NI Configuration Manager Service.

I used to be a real stickler about unnecessary services (and I still am on home machines).  On my development machine, though, I learned my lesson and stopped tweaking with NI services.

The moral of the story is proceed carefully.

For what it's worth...

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smercurio_fc wrote:
If you are simulating devices then you will definitely need to have additional service running. I think you would need at least NI Configuration Manager and NI Device Loader. At least, that's what I have running on my machine for simulated DAQmx devices.

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and watch for unexpected behavior.

[RBFOLS]

You are right, just thought there was a magic bullet out there.  I did use the Profiler and it did indicate which sub vi were consuming resources.

Thanks,

Bob