Unable to install Teststand - NI Uninstaller is higher version error

[Gary_H.]

Hi,

I'm trying to install Teststand 2012 on an inherited company laptop, it has been running okay in the past,

but now if the Sequence Editor is run, a System Level Exception error occurs when the Login step (FrontEndCallbacks.seq) is executed, hence unable to login and use.

When I run the installer from the DVD I get the following message:

The "NI Uninstaller" installation has failed with the following error:

You have a higher version of NI Uninstaller on your system.

You must uninstall it before installing this version.

In the Win 7 Control Panel: Programs & Applications, there is no National Instruments option listed

to allow uninstall. The NI folder does not exist.

Using the Windows "wmic" command, I'm able to list the products installed on the laptop.

I find an entry listed as "NI Uninstaller", and the associated uninstaller file is: MetaUninstaller.msi .

But there are no details listed for the .msi file location so I can't run it, other NI products have full details.

The only other clue is that the wmic "InstallState" is given as "1", unlike the other .msi files

which have location info and an InstallState of "5".

Not sure what "1" means.

What is stopping from me from forcing a re-install of Teststand 2012 ?

Are there some registry entries which require deleting ?

(I also tried Teststand 2014 but the same error occurred.)

Regards,

Gary.

[DavidWilt]

I got a FrontEndCallbacks.seq error before when I tried to use this file from a previous version.

I am a bit confused about your situation.  You get this error when you launch TestStand but no NI products show up as installed?  Or did you uninstall everything so nothing shows up as installed now?  What previous versions we're installed?  If the newer version of software was installed, NXG, it is possible to improperly uninstall the software so you have to re-install the program manager to uninstall everything properly.

A copy of the FrontEndCallbacks.seq is located in the C:\Users\Public\Documents\National Instrument folder.  Does this folder exist?

[Gary_H.]

Hi David,

The laptop has been inherited from previous test engineers. It's likely other versions of Teststand have been load/unloaded in various ways.

"....no NI products show up as installed?" - LabVIEW (ok) and Teststand do run, albeit with an error, I haven't ran the uninstaller but no files are listed as installed in Control Panel.

The Windows tool - WMIC does however list many NI products and their .msi files.

There is a copy of the FrontEndCallbacks.seq in the folder you mention and also C:\Program Files (x86) \......\Teststand2012 .

The laptop is Win7, 64 bit.

You mention "....to re-install the program manager..." , how is this done please ?

Regards,

Gary.

[DavidWilt]

Just to confirm when you go to Control Panel and Add or Remove programs you do not find National Instruments like in the attached image, correct?

If my understand is correct you have have had NI Package Manager installed previously and uninstalled it without uninstalling all the NI software.  If that is that case you will need to reinstalling NI Package Manager before you can uninstall the NI software.

You can do some searching on NI Package Manager for more information but here is some quick information on it, https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z0000019NZaSAM, and a link to reinstall it, http://www.ni.com/download/package-manager-18.0/7634/en/.

[Gary_H.]

There is no National Instruments entry in the list of programs available to un-install or change, via Control Panel > Programs and Features.  

I think your understanding is correct about the install/un-install of the NI Package Manager.

Thank you for the links about the NI Package Manager, I'll give this a go.

Much appreciated.

[DavidWilt]

Let us know if that solves your issue once you are able to test it.

[Gary_H.]

I've finally installed NI Package Manager from the link you supplied.

When executed, the Package Manager did list 2 Teststand components which I opted to remove.

I then tried to re-install Teststand 2012 from the dvd but I got the same error message, which was basically;

"You have a higher version of NI-Uninstaller already installed, you will need to remove it."

There is an option to "Continue" with the installation, but then other similar error messages appear referring to other software components, each of which is installed already and a higher version.

I looked for an entry which referred for the "Un-installer" in the list that the Package Manager had found, but there was nothing remotely similar, so I couldn't un-install it to comply with the error message.

I may have a go at totally removing all NI products using the Package Manager, there is still a working version of LabVIEW 2012 still on the drive.

Thank you for your help, much appreciated.