labview.ini is deleted randomly

[Jed_Davidow]

At least three times now my LabVIEW.ini file gets deleted when I close LV (2009 SP1, Windows 7 x32).

When I restart LV, all my customizations are gone, etc.

Any ideas?

[altenbach]

I had this happen once in LabVIEW 2010 a few months ago. That was after a LabVIEW crash (or windows 7 crash?), though.

I think you are on to something, but it seems difficult to reproduce.

[Jed_Davidow]

It may have been a crash, as when I did restart I saw the recovery window.  But it must have crashed on closing, because I didn't know it.

[Paul_M.]

After digging a little bit deeper, I do think that this error is crash related. Essentially, from what I've been able to find, in rare cases after a crash that is related to a preference change the .ini file extension is actually removed from the file so that a new Labview.ini is created at startup, which seems to be what you're experiencing. That being said, if in the future you are aware of a Labview crash, go ahead and navigate to the Labview folder to see if the file extension has been removed prior to restarting Labview. If it has been removed you can add the file extension back and open it to see which preference was last changed to try to identify the cause. I know this isn't the most specific answer, but since this issue is hard to reproduce, we'll just have to wait and see when it happens again. In the mean time I would recommend backing up your Labview.ini file so that if it does happen again you don't have to start from scratch. Please keep me posted so that we can try to figure out the root issue.

Paul

[Jed_Davidow]

Hi Paul,

I just checked, and there are no "labview" files (sans .ini) in the program folder.

Thank you though!

Jed

[altenbach]

I also could not find any such old files in the labview folder. Maybe it gets overwritten and remove at the next configuration change.

In my case, the most obvious immediate indications was that after restarting LabVIEW, the welcome screen had not a single entry under recent files or projects.