Installing LabVIEW 7.1 RTE via InstallShield

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I just upgraded from LabVIEW 6.1 to 7.1. In the past we built an application with the Application Builder and then built an installer using InstallShield. The installer looks to see if LVRTE is installed using its product code and then installs it if need be. However, after upgrading, the installer cannot determine if LVRTE 7.1 is installed using the product code of LVRTE 7.1. In addition, if I try and run the installer for LVRTE 7.1 manually I get an error
telling me that a higher version of the product is already installed. Also, the LVRTE no longer appears individually in "Add/Remove Programs" but under a generic "NI Software" heading. Using the LVRTE merge module will not work for us because we will have multiple applications installed on one pc and we cannot risk crippling them all if one is removed due to the LVRTE being removed.

Does anyone know what changed between the LabVIEW 6.1 and LabVIEW 7.1 RTE msi files?

Thanks!

[ChrisJ]

Hello!

I am trying to understand your situation a little better. As I understand it, you have two primary issues. The first is not being able to check to see if the LVRTE is installed and the second is not being able to install the RTE manually.

1) How are you checking to see if LVRTE is installed? Are you checking a registry key such as “My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\National Instruments\LabVIEW Run-Time\”? Concerning LabVIEW being bundled under the NI Software heading, you are correct. When you install National Instruments products such as the Run-Time Engine or the DAQ driver, NI has a component to hide all of our items in the add/remove programs list and bundle it under NI Software. NI switched to this policy because many customers were getting a number of our software items all over their add/remove programs list. This provides a convenient way to organize all of our files and not pollute the add/remove programs list. However, each application is still installed as it was before. Each application still runs its own installer and is registered with the operating system as before.

2) I am concerned that you are not able to install the run time engine on your machine. Do you get this same error on multiple machines? Would it be possible to download another copy of the run time engine?

I don’t mean to overwhelm you with questions but do want to try and understand the situation better!

Regards,
Chris J
National Instruments

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1. I am checking to see if the run time engine is installed using the MsiQueryProductState function in InstallShield using its GUID of "{518930BE-7875-4547-B026-20B92F695781}". However, when the installer is run, I get an error that a newer version of the run time engine is already installed. So I tried to install it manually.

2. When installing the run time engine manually, I get the same error as when I use my installer. The target machine does have LabVIEW Professional 7.1 installed already.

I copied the run time engine MSI from the same CD that I installed LabVIEW Professional 7.1 from. If I copy the EXE onto the target machine manually, it runs without any problems.

I thought maybe the run time engine I copied from the 7.1 CD was not correct so I tried to download the latest from ni.com but have not been able to connect to the download page (ftp site). It keeps telling me the page is not available. I keep trying ...

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Some additional information:

The installer works on an Windows NT computer and an Windows XP computer. It does not work on the Windows 2000 computer. I get the error: "Installation aborted: A higher version of this product is already installed." The title bar of the error message contains: "NI LabVIEW Run-Time Engine 7.1".

LabVIEW Professional 7.1 is installed on the Windows NT and Windows 2000 computers.

The error also occurs if I manually run the "lvruntimeeng.msi" manually on the Windows 2000 computer but runs fine manually on the Windows NT computer and Windows XP computer.

[TLE]

The error does seem to be specific to the Windows 2000 computer. I tried the installer on another Windows 2000 computer here and it worked. Any ideas?

[TLE]

However, on another NT computer, the LabVIEW RTE 7.1 installer prompts for a reboot. Since when does LabVIEW RTE require a reboot? This is bad and causes my installer problems.

[ChrisJ]

Do you have any other version of the Run-Time Engine on your Win2k machine? It sounds as if there was previously a bad install and now each time you try to install LVRTE it throws an error. Can you remove any other versions of the software on this computer?

Regards,
Chris J
National Instruments