Why LabVIEW can be only closed via task manager (still)?

[Blokk]

Hello,

I am still seeing a very annoying problem, since many years. When I try to quit and close LabVIEW IDE, its window closes but it is still present in the taskbar. I need to launch Windows Task manager, and manually kill LabVIEW.exe. This problem still present with LV 2016.

Versions: LabVIEW 2015/2016 32 bit

Windows 7 Enterprise x64

What is strange, sometimes Windows is able to properly shutdown LV, but not always...

[Norbert_B]

Let me guess: this happens only if you run specific application code before closing LV.

That means: open LV, wait some time (not loading or running things) then closing LV will work as expected.

Please let us know if my guess is to the point.

Norbert

[Blokk]

Yes, so far when I just open LV, wait a bit, and I try to close it, it does it OK. However I could not find what steps are required to reproduce the problem, what is the "specific application"...

[Norbert_B]

My assumption is that you have code which doesn't exit properly (so called "Zombie Process").

This can be a VI you spawn (e.g. by dynamic loading/execution) or external code which already zombifies the system when the code is loaded. That could be for instance a DLL.

My recommendation is that you try to pinpoint which could you have to load or execute in order for the issue to occur.

Norbert

[Blokk]

I see this behaviour often even if I just open a simple VI, like an example to help someone in the forum. Even no project is opened, and no dynamic calls at all. So there cannot be anything at LV side which is launched by me and not closed properly...

[Norbert_B]

As this behavior is unexpected and is affecting several LV versions on your machine, i would focus on things which are on your systems.

Two questions on this:

- Did you modify LabVIEW.ini and copy it from old version to new version?

- Did you install 2016 in parallel to 2015 and if so did you use separate, dedicated folders (which is default selection)?

Norbert

[billko]

I've seen instances where plugins don't always shut down properly.  I think older versions of Viewpoint's TSVN tool kit does this.  (Now it just crashes on exit if you don't disable icon updates before exiting.)

[Blokk]

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@Norbert_B wrote:

As this behavior is unexpected and is affecting several LV versions on your machine, i would focus on things which are on your systems.

Two questions on this:

- Did you modify LabVIEW.ini and copy it from old version to new version?

- Did you install 2016 in parallel to 2015 and if so did you use separate, dedicated folders (which is default selection)?

Norbert

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No ini modification done. LV2016 was installed after 15, everything is by default, so paths of folders.

billko: I do not use such toolkits.

[Norbert_B]

Is that a virtual machine?

Norbert

[Blokk]

No, not virtual machine. Actually this is not a big issue, just slightly annoying, and so far did not find a deterministic way to reproduce it. If the issue was bigger, I would have certainly spent more time with investigation. So that is why I just made this post, so I might get some hints what can cause this, but obviously many things could, we talk about MS Windows 🙂