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LabVIEW fails to load any project

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I've been working on two projects in LabVIEW 2020 (64 bit) without incident for weeks.  Now today no matter which project I try to load, LabVIEW begins asking for resources it can't seem to find, some of which seem bizzare and unrelated to my project (see the image below).  I was able to find many of the missing VIs and controls but not all of them.  The resources I did find were mostly located in the folder of a previous version (C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\LabVIEW 2019 ).  I uninstalled that version when I upgraded to LabVIEW 2020 because I'm told our license only allows one version to be installed at a time.  After LabVIEW stopped asking for missing resouces it just froze on the opening dialog and did nothing.  After several minutes I tried clicking on the project I wanted to open a second time and LabVIEW crashed.  So far I've attempted the following fixes but nothing seems to help:

 

  1. I always launch LabVIEW as admin.
  2. I tried updating missing drivers and refreshing the installation (running the installer over an existing installation).
  3. I checked the READONLY status of all the folders and files in  C:\Program Files\National Instruments and C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments and changed any that were READONLY=True to READONLY=False

 

I'm still unclear how to make a copy of a project as well as how to migrate VIs and controls from one project to another.  Recently I copied some VIs and controls to another project folder so I could use them in that project.  But I doubt this caused a problem because I did not move or delete any of those files and LabVIEW never asked me to find any of the items I copied.

 

The only other possible culprit is that our IT departement rolled out some new group policies that were applied to my computer recently requiring a reboot.

 

I think I will uninstall then reinstall LabVIEW 2020 tomorrow morning unless I get a better suggestion from someone overnight.

 

Thanks for your consideration of my quandry.

 

problems loading labview project.png

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Do you have LV 32-bit installed as well?  Or any other version of LabVIEW for that matter?  If you've opened a different version of LabVIEW the last time you used LabVIEW, it becomes the default program - even i you right-click on a file and select the correct version to open with.  To combat this, make shortcuts to all versions of LabVIEW and get used to opening LabVIEW from the shortcuts.  As I understand it, this happens to any application that has multiple versions installed.

 

This is the one reason why, when NI touted the changed icon as their #1 improvement, it wasn't totally laughable.  Now, when you make all your shortcuts, you can tell which version and which bitness you are opening up.

Bill
CLD
(Mid-Level minion.)
My support system ensures that I don't look totally incompetent.
Proud to say that I've progressed beyond knowing just enough to be dangerous. I now know enough to know that I have no clue about anything at all.
Humble author of the CLAD Nugget.
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@skinnedknuckles wrote:

I uninstalled that version when I upgraded to LabVIEW 2020 because I'm told our license only allows one version to be installed at a time.  To the best of my knowledge, this is not true.  Certainly many LabVIEW users have several versions installed (in some instances, this is almost required to get some packages to work.

 

  1. I always launch LabVIEW as admin.  This, in my opinion, is foolish, and potentially dangerous.
  2. I tried updating missing drivers and refreshing the installation (running the installer over an existing installation).  Potentially dangerous.
  3. I checked the READONLY status of all the folders and files in  C:\Program Files\National Instruments and C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments and changed any that were READONLY=True to READONLY=False Also dangerous.

 

I'm still unclear how to make a copy of a project as well as how to migrate VIs and controls from one project to another.  Recently I copied some VIs and controls to another project folder so I could use them in that project.  But I doubt this caused a problem because I did not move or delete any of those files and LabVIEW never asked me to find any of the items I copied.  This is tricky.  "Common routines" can be put in "Packages" (think VIPM and NIPM) and placed in "protected space" in "Program Files".  Another thing to do is to make sure that all the files you need are in a discrete Program "Folder" -- in this model, if you have a sub-VI that you use in two Projects, you put a copy in each of the Project Folders.  


I think it is unlikely that your IT folks messed up your LabVIEW Projects.  Try keeping each Project "separated" from other Projects by being in its own Project Folder.  This makes it simple when you save each Project in its own Version Control Repository.  You might have a sub-VI in both Projects -- it is sometimes simpler to have a copy in each Project's (separate) Project Folder.  It seems probable to me that moving "shared" sub-VIs from one Project folder to another may be responsible for your woes.

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Hi Bob,
Thanks for your feedback.  I think you're right that I moved some shared files and that messed things up.  I'll take your advice to keep project folders separate and in good order. 

I'm not altogether sure why but whenever I copy files from our network server they are always written to my local drive with ReadOnly=True.  LabVIEW kept asking me to find resources that were located within the LabVIEW search path and I discovered it was because the files had ReadOnly=True.  So the reason I run LabVIEW "as admin" is because this allows it to load readonly resource files without asking me to find them.  I respect your opinion but disagree that this is risky.  This also explains why I change the status of files to ReadOnly=False.  It's not that I want to change files that the NI installer set as ReadOnly, it's just that I keep accumulating ReadOnly files whenever I copy something from our network server and that has caused delays when LabVIEW asks me to find a resource.  The next time I do a fresh install I'll check to see if the installer designated any files as ReadOnly=True.
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Bob was right, after a fresh install of LabVIEW 2020 there were 123 files with the ReadOnly Attribute set to true.  I don't think changing those to false was the source of my problem but it could have added to the confusion and certainly didn't help in any way.  I'll keep those as ReadOnly=true. A list of the files is available here.

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Solution
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A better solution may exist but ultimately uninstalling and reinstalling LabVIEW 2020 fixed everything for me.

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@skinnedknuckles wrote:

A better solution may exist but ultimately uninstalling and reinstalling LabVIEW 2020 fixed everything for me.


That was probably the best solution. Any manual messing with things has the potential of being incomplete, or worse, even break more stuff. 😄

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