how to automatically launch DSC tag engine on PC boot

[Charlie Silver]

How can I automatically launch the tag engine when XP boots, before any user is logged on?  I see some discussion about this from several years ago for Windows NT (http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=60855&requireLogin=False), but the answer is not very helpful and I don't think it applies to XP. 

I am running DSC 7.1, and I need to be able to log PLC alarms at all times (even if the PC reboots late at night and there is no user to log on).  If there is a better way to do this, please let me know.  It seems like the tag engine should have an option to automatically start on system boot so it is always running, but I'm not aware of a way to do that.

[pallen]

Hello Charlie,

While I'm pretty sure you can setup the tag engine as a "service", I don't have enough experience with the DSC tool to know whether or not this service will start without a user logged on.  

One workaround might be have an auto login.  The TweakUI utility can help you set this up.

Many of my factory apps need to re-start without any interaction from the user, and this tool seems to help with that. 

Good luck. 

[Charlie Silver]

Thanks, Patrick, but the PC has many user accounts, and I need to keep it open for logins when it boots up. 

I was hoping I wouldn't have to set up the XP service myself, but if that's really the only way to automatically start the tag server then I'll have to try it...  It still seems like NI must have come up with an easier way to do this, but I haven't found it yet.

Charlie

[Charlie_P]

Good Afternoon Charlie,

It can be tricky to find information on older versions of our software.  In addition to our website, I looked through some internal databases and cannot find any instructions for setting the Tag Engine up to work the way you want it to.  I found one document dated July 2005 (same generation of LabVIEW and DSC as your system) and it says that setting the Tag Engine as an automatically starting OS service was an unsupported configuration.

As of LabVIEW 8.x, the Tag Engine is no longer used.  We switched to the Shared Variable Engine, which starts when the computer turns on.  Deployed libraries (what took the place of the older .scf files with tag configurations to hold the variables) are never undeployed automatically; you must tell it to undeploy.  As such, you have a system which will start logging as soon as your OS is running, independent of which user, if any, is logged into the PC.

Migrating from LabVIEW DSC 7.1 to 8.0

     http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/B4FF7B27441C0AE1862570F9005F2E94?OpenDocument

[unclebump]

could you write a vi that starts the tag engine, and set it to run when opened using the engine launch.vi located in the dsc module system section of the toolkit?? Then use application builder to turn that file into a standalone executable .exe file. Then register that file as a service?? I'm not sure what it would take to get an opc server to run as a service, but I think just starting the tag engine should make your opc program run.

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=197

[parthabe]

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AE Charlie wrote:

As of LabVIEW 8.x, the Tag Engine is no longer used.  We switched to the Shared Variable Engine, which starts when the computer turns on.

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But is the tagsrv.exe anyway related to the Tag Engine of the older version of DSC?

[Charlie_P]

Good Afternoon parthabe,

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@parthabe wrote:

But is the tagsrv.exe anyway related to the Tag Engine of the older version of DSC?

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tagsrv.exe is not related to the Tag Engine.  tagsrv.exe is what maintains the link between bound shared variables and the Shared Variable Engine.