LabVIEW 2014 installer points to wrong minimum OS

[LarryC-ATS]

I have run into an issue when validating an installer on Windows XP Service Pack 3 system. This is the default minimum system requirment selected in the Advanced tab of the installer creator, which I have not changed.  When running the installer on the target system, it shows an error that the minimum required OS is Windows 7 Service pack 1.  

Looking into the setup INI file for the installer, the value for [OS] is VersionNTMin=6,1,7601,1,0.  I was able to get it to run by changing this to VersionNTMin=5,1,2600,3,0.  This is the value from an installer I built from the same project just a month ago.  

I looked to see if this was a bug but I couldn't find anything on it.  Now that I know this is an issue, I can check my installers and make sure that the minimum version is corrected.  My LabVIEW version is 14.0.1f3.  

Any help with this is appreciated.

Best regards, 

Larry

[Jacobson-ni]

What OS did you build the installer on? If you built this on XP I would agree that it wouldn't make sense but if you built it on W7 I'm not as sure.

[LarryC-ATS]

Matt, 

The installer was built on Windows 7. Regardless of the operating system, the installer creator help documentation states that Windows XP is the default minimum.  I have been building and deploying applications for months this way.  I always validate my installers on Windows 7 and a Windows XP machine to make sure I don't have any issues when they are deployed to our contract manufacturers. This is the first time that I have run into this problem.  

I have a vague recollection that on my previous builds, Windows 7 was the highest level. It now has Windows 8 and above as the highest level. I tried building the installer with different  minimum OS selections.  It appeared that the only two minimum versions allowed were Windows 7 and Windows 8.  If I am correct, then maybe this got switched up when a patch or update was applied. 

Thanks, 

Larry

[Taki1999]

I just ran into this as well. I'm trying to build an installer for Windows XP but when I get around to using the installer, it tells me the minimum OS needed is Windows 7 SP1.

I'm a little stuck here. I'm not sure whether it's LabVIEW 2013 causing my issue or if building on Windows 8 is my issue.

I'm going to try Save For Previous Version on my LabVIEW 2013 project to see if I can get it working in 2011. It'll be a bit harder for me to get a working version of LabVIEW onto my XP machine to see if building on an ancient OS will fix my problem. I'll post whatever I find back here.

EDIT: Rolling back to LabVIEW 2011 didn't solve it so it looks like it may be something else. Maybe something with the MSI and Windows 8? 

[Taki1999]

I also see on the NI website that July 1, 2016 is a critical date for stopping support for XP. I'm wondering if something I've pulled from NI Update service has deactivated XP support unintentionally.

[Taki1999]

It looks to me that the NI Application builder is putting the wrong value into the VersionNTMin key.

I hacked per this thread and got the Installer past the first hurdle.

I still had a .NET installation error during the install but it looks like it is progressing normally.

[LarryC-ATS]

That looks like the exact same fix that I had to do for my setup.ini file.  I had to change this:

[OS]
VersionNTMin=6,1,7601,1,0
VersionNTMax=

To this: 

[OS]
VersionNTMin=5,1,2600,3,0
VersionNTMax=

After that the installer ran fine.  

[Taki1999]

Yeah. Whatever happened to the Me Too button? 🙂

I do think something changed with the App builder and would like to get an NI response to see if they're going to roll it back so that I don't have to hack all my future installers. 

[natasftw]

Are you including the NI Update Service 2016 in your installer?  If so, that doesn't have support for Win XP.  That'll change your value you check for a minimum OS installation by default (as your installer includes items that aren't supported on Win XP).

[LarryC-ATS]

Here is a link to the XP Life Cycle Support announcement. As you said NI support of Windows XP/Vista/Server 2003 ended on July 1st.

I think that you are correct. Some flag was set in an update that automatically changed it so that no matter what operating system is selected, other than Windows 7 or 8, the default is now Windows 7.

I doubt that NI will change this. It would have been clearer to me if the selections were disabled and greyed out. The only way to opt out would appear to be to not update or possibly use an older version of LabVIEW. Those might be affected too. I am not going to explore that possibliity. My co-worker is in the middle of the laborious process of updating our software library to run on Windows 7 and 10. For those of us still deploying applications on XP, the workaround will have to suffice.