Installer running problem

[KSRK]

Hello All,

I've developed a small application which reads some voltage through RS232 communication and displays it continuously on the UI. It then appends this value in a .xls file in D drive during every iteration of the while loop. This file location was hardcoded for the D drive.

For this application, I've created the EXE and Installer and they were supplied to the customers. Run-Time Engine option was selected while creating the Installer. This I could crosscheck from the Build settings file.

Now we were informed about the following problem:

When the first measurement has been done, the demo software tries to write into data file (.xls file supposed to be in D drive) and the measurement is struck.

But there was no problem with this application in one of their laptop.

For this problem I'm going to conclude any one of the following reasons:

1. In the code for this application, file location is hardcoded as 'D:\' drive. this can be problem in the laptops/PCs where 'D:\' drive is not available. this can be made as 'C:\' drive since this is available in almost all the laptops\PCs.

                                                                                                OR

2.Instead of launching the application from the Installer, executable file might have been used directly. this will cause the problems where LabVIEW was not installed.

                                                                                                 OR

3.MS Excel software is not installed in the target PC/Laptop where theis application is being used.

Does any of these points are valid in this situation? Am I thinking in correct way about the solution?  Pl. suggest me if any modifications need to be incorporated in this VI.  VI is attached.

Advanced thanks for going through this post......

-Krishna.

[Dennis_Knutson]

I can see a couple possible sources of an error. One is the hard-coded path to a file. It might be better to just let the file be created in the same folder that the exe is installed to. Then the end user can install it wherever. Be aware that if you use the function Current VI's Path, it will be different when you build an exe. You need to check to see whether the app is running in the development or run-time system and do an extra strip path if it's the run-time. The application property App.Kind will return this information. Second, did you select to include the VISA run-time support when you built the app? You need that to run your serial communication. I think this might be the most likely source of the error.

Your front panel error out indicator is hidden. You might want to make it visible to that you can get an actual error code.

I don't understand how the application can be run run without the LabVIEW run-time being installed. Assuming that your distribution is the microsoft .msi file, this will have to be run and this will put the LabVIEW run-time on the pc. Also, it shouldn't matter one bit whether the end user has Excel installed or not. You are not writing a native Excel file at all. You are writing a text file with a .xls entension. If you were using ActiveX to invoke Excel and write that way, then that could be a problem.