Labview stops opening menus and windows

[ste_edi]

On my Windows 7 laptop Labview (several versions) stops opening additional menus or windows about 30-60 seconds into a session working on a VI - rendering it unworkable as you lose access to any context and pull-down menus as well as new VI front panels and block diagram windows. The symptom is that, from opening windows and menus normaly, it switches to a state where it only is able to briefly render the new frame, but then is unable to fill it with the content, uppon which the frame vanishes again very quickly (i.e. the frame is only flashed for a fraction of a second - and at the same time the already open frames flicker as well).

This is repeatable: when Labview is closed and reopened, or even when only the VIs are closed and reopened, at first one can open new windows and context menus and then it becomes unable to produce new pop-up windows or menus again. Only the time delay may vary, which possibly is correlated by the amount of user activiy (i.e. if one lets Labview running idle, than this may happen later, but suspect this is not significant).

I have experienced this now with three installations of Labview on the Windows 7 laptop:

Labview 2009

Labview 2012 SP1

Labview 2014

For all of them the previous installation was completely deinstalled and the new installation then was installed from scratch.

As this bears the signs of a memory issue I monitored the memory consumption of the Labview application relative to the load on the machine. The Labview application only used a small amount of the resources (smaller than 100-200Mb of 8Gb total and ~4Gb available memory) and little CPU time. Also when shutting down other applications to free another ~2Gb of available memory the situation stayed the same, including the typical time delay until the problem occured. That, to my understanding excludes the Labview application eating up the system resources (together with the other applications remaining fully usable when the problem occurs).

I see this problem on my Windows 7 laptop with newly created VIs as well as with existing VIs which run fine on other systems (LV7.1 on Win XP as well as LV2014 on Linux).

I also was using Labview 2009 on the same Windows 7 laptop a few years ago without problems (i.e. the identical machine, which only has seen a HDD upgrade but still has the same OS installation, as the old installation was imaged to the new HDD). When starting to use the existing Labview 2009 installation after some idle years I first experienced the described problems.

So, what has changed? What may be wrong here? I need Labview now running on that laptop again ...

[aputman]

My spidey sense is not working this morning.  Can you post some code?  I can open 2012 version.

[ste_edi]

The problem is essentially code independent. It occurs when loading up any of the two attached VIs (one of them only comprising of global variables) or even when you open up a new VI - I had the problem kicking in even before I placed the first element on the block diagram of a completely new VI.

[JÞB]

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@aputman wrote:

My spidey sense is not working this morning.  Can you post some code?  I can open 2012 version.

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My magic 8-Ball might be working better

~~what version of the TSVN Toolkit is installed?~~~

Update the TK or uninstall it

[aputman]

My bad.  I thought you were saying that when you ran a VI, this happened.  But this is actually occuring during creation.  It seems that you have ruled out Labview being the problem, so maybe it is a video driver problem.  Try reinstalling your video drivers and see what happens.  Since you said that the harddrive was an image, maybe something was corrupted during the ghosting process.

[ste_edi]

I am not sure which module TSVN is, I don't think I have that installed.

Currently I have installed (LabVIEW 2012 SP1):

NI Customer Experience Improvement Program
NI I/O Trace 3.0.2
NI IVI Compliance Package 4.5
NI Instrument I/O Assistant
NI LabVIEW 2012 SP1 (32-bit)
NI LabVIEW 2012 SP1 Variable Web Service
NI LabVIEW 2012 VI Analyzer Toolkit
NI LabVIEW SignalExpress 2012
NI LabWindows/CVI Shared Run-Time Engine 2010 SP1
NI Measurement & Automation Explorer 5.4.0
NI Measurement Studio Common .NET Assemblies for .NET 4.0 and VS2010
NI Network Browser 5.4.0
NI PXI Platform Services 3.2.1
NI PXI Platform Services 3.2.1 Configuration Support
NI System Configuration Runtime 5.4.0
NI TDM Exel Add-In 3.4
NI Update Service 2.2.5
NI VIPM Helper 2012
NI-488.2 2.3.1.1
NI-DAQmx 9.6.2
NI-DAQmx ADE Support 9.6.2
NI-DAQmx MAX Configuration Support 9.6.2
NI-VISA 5.3.0
NI-VISA Runtime 5.3.0
NI-VISA Server 5.3.0

When I had LabVIEW 2014 installed previously I had installed:

NI CompactRIO 14.0
NI CompactRIO 14.0 LabVIEW Support
NI Customer Experience Improvement Program
NI I/O Trace 14.0.0
NI I/O Trace API for LabVIEW 2014 (32-bit)
NI Instrument I/O Assistant
NI LabVIEW 2014 (32-bit)
NI LabVIEW 2014 Database Connectivity Toolkit
NI LabVIEW 2014 Report Generation Toolkit for Microsoft Office
NI LabVIEW 2014 VI Analyzer Toolkit
NI LabWindows/CVI Shared Run-Time Engine 2013 SP1
NI Measurement & Automation Explorer 14.0.0
NI Measurement Studio Common .NET Assemblies for .NET 4.0 and VS2010
NI Network Browser 5.5.0
NI PXI Platform Services Configuration 14.0
NI PXI Platform Services Runtime 14.0
NI System Configuration Runtime 14.0
NI TDM Exel Add-In 14.0
NI Update Service 2014
NI VIPM Helper 2014
NI-488.2 14.0
NI-488.2 Runtime 14.0
NI-DAQmx 14.0.0
NI-DAQmx ADE Support 14.0.0
NI-DAQmx MAX Configuration Support 14.0.0
NI-RIO 14.0
NI-VISA 14.0.0
NI-VISA Runtime 14.0.0
NI-VISA Server 14.0.0

And in the first place with LabVIEW 2009 I had installed:

NI IVI Compliance Package 4.1
NI Instrument I/O Assistant
NI LabVIEW 2009 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
NI LabVIEW 2009 VI Analyzer Toolkit
NI LabVIEW Run-Time Engine 7.1.1
NI LabVIEW SignalExpress 2009
NI LabWindows/CVI 9.0.1 Run-Time Engine
NI Measurement & Automation Explorer 4.6.2
NI Measurement Studio Common .NET Language Assemblies for the .NET
Framework 2.0
NI PXI Platform Service 2.5.3
NI PXI Platform Service 2.5.3 Configuration Support
NI Spy 2.7.1
NI System API RT
NI System API Windows 32-bit
NI TDM Exel Add-In 2.1
NI-488.2 2.7.3
NI-DAQmx 9.0.2
NI-DAQmx ADE Support 9.0.2
NI-DAQmx MAX Configuration Support 9.0.2
NI-VISA 4.6.2
NI-VISA Runtime 4.6.2
NI-VISA Server 4.6.2

[ste_edi]

Reinstalling video drivers will take some time before I can do that.

I will come back on this when I have tried.

[JÞB]

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@ste_edi wrote:

I am not sure which module TSVN is, I don't think I have that installed.

Currently I have installed (LabVIEW 2012 SP1):

NI Customer Experience Improvement Program
NI I/O Trace 3.0.2
NI IVI Compliance Package 4.5
NI Instrument I/O Assistant
NI LabVIEW 2012 SP1 (32-bit)
NI LabVIEW 2012 SP1 Variable Web Service
NI LabVIEW 2012 VI Analyzer Toolkit
NI LabVIEW SignalExpress 2012
NI LabWindows/CVI Shared Run-Time Engine 2010 SP1
NI Measurement & Automation Explorer 5.4.0
NI Measurement Studio Common .NET Assemblies for .NET 4.0 and VS2010
NI Network Browser 5.4.0
NI PXI Platform Services 3.2.1
NI PXI Platform Services 3.2.1 Configuration Support
NI System Configuration Runtime 5.4.0
NI TDM Exel Add-In 3.4
NI Update Service 2.2.5
NI VIPM Helper 2012
NI-488.2 2.3.1.1
NI-DAQmx 9.6.2
NI-DAQmx ADE Support 9.6.2
NI-DAQmx MAX Configuration Support 9.6.2
NI-VISA 5.3.0
NI-VISA Runtime 5.3.0
NI-VISA Server 5.3.0

When I had LabVIEW 2014 installed previously I had installed:

NI CompactRIO 14.0
NI CompactRIO 14.0 LabVIEW Support
NI Customer Experience Improvement Program
NI I/O Trace 14.0.0
NI I/O Trace API for LabVIEW 2014 (32-bit)
NI Instrument I/O Assistant
NI LabVIEW 2014 (32-bit)
NI LabVIEW 2014 Database Connectivity Toolkit
NI LabVIEW 2014 Report Generation Toolkit for Microsoft Office
NI LabVIEW 2014 VI Analyzer Toolkit
NI LabWindows/CVI Shared Run-Time Engine 2013 SP1
NI Measurement & Automation Explorer 14.0.0
NI Measurement Studio Common .NET Assemblies for .NET 4.0 and VS2010
NI Network Browser 5.5.0
NI PXI Platform Services Configuration 14.0
NI PXI Platform Services Runtime 14.0
NI System Configuration Runtime 14.0
NI TDM Exel Add-In 14.0
NI Update Service 2014
NI VIPM Helper 2014
NI-488.2 14.0
NI-488.2 Runtime 14.0
NI-DAQmx 14.0.0
NI-DAQmx ADE Support 14.0.0
NI-DAQmx MAX Configuration Support 14.0.0
NI-RIO 14.0
NI-VISA 14.0.0
NI-VISA Runtime 14.0.0
NI-VISA Server 14.0.0

And in the first place with LabVIEW 2009 I had installed:

NI IVI Compliance Package 4.1
NI Instrument I/O Assistant
NI LabVIEW 2009 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
NI LabVIEW 2009 VI Analyzer Toolkit
NI LabVIEW Run-Time Engine 7.1.1
NI LabVIEW SignalExpress 2009
NI LabWindows/CVI 9.0.1 Run-Time Engine
NI Measurement & Automation Explorer 4.6.2
NI Measurement Studio Common .NET Language Assemblies for the .NET
Framework 2.0
NI PXI Platform Service 2.5.3
NI PXI Platform Service 2.5.3 Configuration Support
NI Spy 2.7.1
NI System API RT
NI System API Windows 32-bit
NI TDM Exel Add-In 2.1
NI-488.2 2.7.3
NI-DAQmx 9.0.2
NI-DAQmx ADE Support 9.0.2
NI-DAQmx MAX Configuration Support 9.0.2
NI-VISA 4.6.2
NI-VISA Runtime 4.6.2
NI-VISA Server 4.6.2

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We may be having simillar issues!

I would love to chat... 8-Ball Consulting's number is only  2 clicks away

[Bob_Schor]

Oh, dear, multiple versions of LabVIEW on a single PC.  Tell me about it -- even when done "carefully", it can go awry (I just spent several days recovering from installing 2015, which went well, thank you very much, except it put MAX in a 1000-second "timeout" stance (which I saw several years ago) -- you open MAX, it can't "find" the System Resources (except Total Physical Memory) for the Host PC until 1000 seconds (I timed it!) has elapsed, and if you open Remote Systems, the Windows "Busy-Wait" symbol ("Searching ...") takes 1000 seconds to stop spinning, during which time you cannot close MAX (except by killing it with Task Manager).

I now try to never uninstall any version of LabVIEW without uninstalling every version of LabVIEW, deleting all of the LabVIEW files on the disk, and (very carefully) doing my best to remove all traces of LabVIEW, National Instruments, IVI, and a few other things from the Registry (very dangerous!).  Sometimes it is easier to simply rebuild the entire PC.

What I've found works much better (and often fixes things -- it fixed my MAX problem) is to do a "Repair" (instead of an Uninstall) of the NI Software.  This can also be challenging, as you'll need the installation media for potentially every version installed on your PC, and may need to "guess" which DVD the "so-and-so Module" can be found.

I'm sure you already know that you need to install LabVIEW "oldest version first", and maintain chronological installation order.

Finally, I'm not 100% certain this is true, but I interpret TSVN as references to Tortoise SubVersioN (TSVN), possibly itself or a toolkit using TSVN.

Bob Schor

P.S. -- I actually resorted to the "Reformat the hard drive" approach and started over more than once, fortunately not within the last 3-4 years.

[ste_edi]

I (/we in our group) never had two versions of LabVIEW on a single computer.

I always deinstalled the old version completely, not only of LabVIEW but of *all* NI software, before reinstalling any new version from media, whether with lower or higher version numbers . (And yes, it is a pain!)

Though, I didn't go to the length of purging the registry in this process (although I have gained over the years experience setting/changing/deleting registry entries for other issues - so I could do if neccessary).

If I would know which part is 'broken' I would be happy to attempt a 'repair' of LabVIEW components. But apart from reinstalling/upgrading the video driver, suggested earlier, I am out of ideas.