Reformat and reainstall LabVIEW RT target

[BPerlman]

I am using the PXIe-8133 with LabVIEW RTOS.  

I would like to be able to re-create a clean machine; to return it to an out of the box state.

Is there a simple way to do this?  If not, is there a pretty foolproof way to do it?  I am pretty new to LabVIEW RT and I did not set it up in the first place (someone at NI did it and sent it to us ready to go), so I am a bit afraid of doing it wrong and making my system unusable....

If there is already something written to tell me how to do this, I'd be happy to be pointed to the right place.

Thank you.

Batya

[P@Anand]

You can format the RT system and restore to factory settings.

[BPerlman]

How do I do that?   What will I have when I'm finished?  What will I still have to install?

I'm not talking about restoring the BIOS to factory settings.  I want to do something like a reformat and have the working operating system (I have a dual boot machine so I'd rather not mess up the Windows installation and just fully clean and reinstall the LVRT operating system and get rid of anything new, remnants of what I've done, etc.

Thank you.

Batya

[Texas_Diaz]

In MAX, right-click the target in the "Remote Systems" view and select "Format Disk".  This will format the RT partition on the disk to a clean slate - it will not affect the Windows partition (so long as the Windows partition is NTFS).  When rebooted into RT, the target will reboot into LabVIEW Real-Time Safemode.  Then you can install software onto the target from within MAX.

-Danny

[BPerlman]

So, apparently, after format disk it reinstalls basic stuff automatically?  How do I know if it has put everything I need and in the right versions?  If not, how do I know what I need and which versions?

I know these questions sound very basic, but I've only recently started working with LVRT and we got the system already set up (by, I think, a local rep).  So I know just about nothing about setting up the system, and have only recently learned much about using it!

Thank you.

Batya

[Arham-H]

Hi Batya,

Once you format the disk I don't think there should be any software installed on it. What software do you see?

Please follow this link below which has steps on formatting a Real-Time PXI Target. As for the software versions, once you push software from the host to the Real-Time Target the same version numbers will be transferred. Follow this link to install software on your Real-Time PXI Target. 

Regards,

[nathand]

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@BPerlman wrote:

So, apparently, after format disk it reinstalls basic stuff automatically?  How do I know if it has put everything I need and in the right versions?  If not, how do I know what I need and which versions?

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Yes, after you reformat it will install the basic RT operating system automatically. There's nothing you can do here, nor is there anything you can mess up, so far as I've seen on multiple RT platforms and across several years of LabVIEW versions. Note that this is just the operating system, which I doubt has changed much. Then you install the LabVIEW Run-Time on top of that, which you do from within Measurement and Automation Explorer under the Software tab. That lets you pick which version of the LabVIEW software and hardware drivers you'd like to install. If it fails for some reason, you'll get an error and will need to reinstall the appropriate component from your LabVIEW disks to your local computer.

There's also an option in Measurement and Automation Explorer to create an RT startup disk on a USB drive, which you can then use to boot and install an RT system. That startup disk has another useful option: you can use it to boot a working RT system, and then create an image of that RT system onto the flash drive, which you can install onto another machine or reinstall onto the same machine later if you need to restore a previous working setup.

[Texas_Diaz]

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nathand wrote:

Yes, after you reformat it will install the basic RT operating system automatically. There's nothing you can do here, nor is there anything you can mess up, so far as I've seen on multiple RT platforms and across several years of LabVIEW versions. Note that this is just the operating system, which I doubt has changed much. 

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Actually, that only happens on a desktop RT system.  PXI RT systems have a copy of a working OS in its BIOS firmware, and when the OS in the BIOS detects there is no OS on the hard disk the OS in the BIOS kicks in and launches giving you the ability to install a new OS onto the disk.  The OS is included in the LabVIEW Real-Time component that you install via MAX, so when you install RT on the disk you're also putting the latest version of the OS there too.  On desktop systems the formatter copies a safemode.exe file to the disk that effectively acts the same as the PXI BIOS firmware OS.  

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@nathand wrote:

There's also an option in Measurement and Automation Explorer to create an RT startup disk on a USB drive, which you can then use to boot and install an RT system. That startup disk has another useful option: you can use it to boot a working RT system, and then create an image of that RT system onto the flash drive, which you can install onto another machine or reinstall onto the same machine later if you need to restore a previous working setup.

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Be incredibly careful about using that USB drive on a PXI system.  If you format the PXI controller with the USB drive, the safemode.exe that the USB drive puts on the disk will "brand" the controller as a Desktop target, which does not support things like PXI backplane triggering, NI Watchdog, power button shutdowns (LabVIEW RT 2013 and newer - whoops, was I supposed to not say that?) and other advanced features of a PXI / PXIe system.  If you do format a PXI system with the USB Flash Drive, you have to boot the controller into "LabVIEW RT Safe Mode" (specifically using the setting in the BIOS) and format the controller via MAX (without using the USB Key) in order to get the system to re-brand as a PXI / PXIe system.  It's one of those things that will make you say, "what the he..." when it happens to you, but the USB key has features that are NOT meant for a PXI system (though we didn't have a good place to put image management except on the USB key, and we didn't want to create a special key just for image managements, which is why we put it there).

-Danny