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Cannot uninstall LabVIEW

I consider myself pretty computer literate, but I'm afraid I may have really screwed up my LabVIEW installations...

 

For a couple of reasons which I will not go into, I wanted to uninstall LabVIEW and reinstall from the disks. When I tried to uninstall through add/remove programs > National Instruments dialog, I got an error (error 1612) for many of the ~1500 NI components installed, saying the uninstall failed. I got Revo Uninstaller and ran the uninstall again, cleaning up all registry items.

 

There are still many NI products installed (I can still launch LabVIEW, but some toolkits are missing). How do I get rid of everything? Can I delete the Program Files/National Instruments folder and re-install, or will that just make things worse?

 

Edit: I've tried many knowledge base articles, including this one. But I cannot find the .msi files, so I'm afraid I may be out of luck...

 

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/F4B8D92A304E4A7B862577460072002F

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If you've already "cleaned up the Registry Files" with another uninstaller, I fear you are in for a lot of (potentially dangerous) work.  I've been in this situation, myself -- the first time, it involved a reformat of my Hard Drive, but I've gotten "less drastic" since then.  You should be warned, however, that the "Fresh Start" is the best way to ensure you have a clean system.

 

In recent years, I've learned a much better way to repair faulty LabVIEW installations than Uninstall/Reinstall cycles (indeed, I just finished doing this 10 minutes ago, but that's another sad story).  Open Control Panel, go to Programs and Features (if Windows 7), find National Instruments Software, click "Change", select all of the software (or, alternatively, the one piece you think is failing) and click Repair.

 

Be warned -- you will be asked for many of the Distribution Disks, identified only by the Version (e.g. LabVIEW 2012 SP1) and the name of the Distribution Folder (e.g. LV-RT).  In particular, it does not tell you which of 3 (or more) DVDs to insert.  If you put the wrong one in, it will sneer at you ("Invalid Distribution"), so you get to "guess again".  LV-ENG is always on Disk 1, however ...

 

In your case, you may have gone past the ability to do this.  Still, if there seem to be many (most?) entries under National Instruments Software, you will only lose time trying this method -- you are unlikely to further corrupt your system.

 

If this fails, I know no other way to do a "Force Uninstall" other than to scrub the Registry of all LabVIEW/National Instrument entries (there may be hundreds of them) and then delete from the hard drive all NI-related folders.  When you do the re-install, it is definitely safer to install LabVIEW (only), reboot, install LabVIEW Embedded (and RT), reboot, install everything else except Drivers, reboot, and install Drivers.  Yes, you shouldn't need to do this, but I've watched an "all-at-once" installation install, then kill, required NI Services -- the Repair trick, however, does seem to fix this.

 

Good Luck.

 

Bob Schor

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Hi Bob, thank you for your message. I did a system restore to a point where I can still access the NI add/remove programs application. I'm now repairing the items one by one, I will update with the result.

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Whew!  It will be a bit slow, but this should work (Famous Last Words ...).

 

Bob Schor

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I'm finally back to a point where I can work on my largest application. I'm sure some surprise installations will be needed in the future.

 

I never thought I would feel so successful on a Friday for getting back to where I was on Monday!

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