Determine which Run-Time Engine is required for an executable

[PJGCC1]

Hi

I have several program which have been complied using different LabVIEW version.

I would like to know which version was used to compile the program before I run it.

[Hooovahh]

That's a good question without an easy answer, but at least there are several answers to choose from.

I believe if you try to run the EXE and your Run-Time Engine is not installed it will tell you what version is needed.  It'll say something like "Unable to Find Run-TIme Engine XX which is required"

One issue with this idea is that if you have multiple RTEs installed, and one of them is the right one, the EXE will run and you will have no way of knowing which version was the one needed and used by the EXE.  To get around this you can usually find in the EXE in a text editor (or hex editor) the version used.  This text is version dependent and a little hard to find.

Third way is to run the EXE on a machine with multiple RTEs and one of them is right.  Then look at the version of the LVRT.DLL that is being used.  This requires a Windows program to monitor loaded DLLs.  I believe Sysinternals makes one.

[PJGCC1]

Thanks

I was looking for a method that did not require runing the program, so that I can set-up a PC with only the requred runtime.

[NabilahF]

Hi PJGCC1,

I am an Applications Engineer at National Instruments. Unfortunately, there is not a utility or diagnostic tool to determine which LabVIEW Run Time Engine (RTE) is required to run an executable. However, there is no problem with installing multiple RTE's on your machine. Here's what I would recommend: 

1. Do some guesswork to figure out 2 or 3 versions of LabVIEW that you would likely have used to build the applications. They correlate exactly to the RTE that each build requires. 
2. Install those RTE's (should be able to find them for free here: http://search.ni.com/nisearch/app/main/p/bot/no/ap/global/lang/en/pg/1/q/labview%20run-time%20engine... ). 
3. Attempt to run your applications. If you need to specify an RTE to use, try the two or three until you get one that works. 

In the future, when building applications, I would encourage you to also consider building an installer that includes the RTE in the install ("Additional Installers" tab). 

I hope this helps. Thanks and have a great day!

[MarcoMauri]

Hi! I tried using the Windows Dependancy Walker to solve the issue and got the following log entry:

"

LoadLibraryExA("C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\Shared\LabVIEW Run-Time\2011\\lvrt.dll", 0x00000000, LOAD_WITH_ALTERED_SEARCH_PATH) called from "YourExe.EXE" at address 0x00401F68.
Loaded "LVRT.DLL" at address 0x30000000.  Successfully hooked module.

"

But I had to launch the exe....

Regards,

Marco

[Hooovahh]

Alright I got another method that doesn't require you to run the EXE but may or may not work on all versions of LabVIEW.  I only tested it on 2011 and 2012 so let me know if you have an EXE that it doesn't work on.  It will extract the EXE resources, and then look for a resource that is only a number.  In my testing with 2011 and 2012 this number will be the version of LabVIEW the EXE was built with.  This does require a version of LabVIEW installed (because it is a VI after all) but if you are good with some other language you could translate what my VI does into a EXE that doesn't rely on LabVIEW.

EDIT: Found a LabVIEW 7.1 EXE that it doesn't work on.

[Hooovahh]

Okay new version.  This one has been tested with 7.1, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 and appears to work properly.  Let me know if it doesn't work for any other EXEs.

There is also an Idea Exchange on this topic here.

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Get-LabVIEW-RTE-version-of-an-already-built-EXE/idi-p/...

[Bugpower]

Used Version 1, worked great for 2013. Cool tool, helped me a lot thanks 😉