xp versus win 7

[SeanJ]

Hi,

Does anyone know if there is a difference in the way labVIEW 2010 functions under windows 7 and windows xp.

Our test time has increased from 50minutes to 1hr10minutes after transitioning from Win 7 to Win XP.

This is pretty awful!  Our suspicion is that parallelism is handled differently under the different operating systems.

Does anyone know if this is the case?

Sean

[taper]

Is this on the same PC?  Win7 is going to be all-around slower than XP on older hardware.

[Yamaeda]

There might be different limits to the number of parallell threads or simply an issue of memory swapping (assuming the XP computer is older).

/Y

[SeanJ]

Apologies!  Please read my issue as

"Our test time has increased from 50minutes to 1hr10minutes after transitioning from Win XP to Win 7."

Sean

[taper]

I didn't even notice that.  I'm so used to seeing issues with Vista or 7 being slower than XP my brain just skipped over that.

What does your memory usage look like?  The extra overhead of Win7 could have pushed you into regularly swapping memory, mentioned above, which is very slow.  If you have less than 2GB RAM I highly recommend going to at least 4GB.  If you're using 32bit Win7 I think it only supports around 3.5GB but you can have 4 installed without issues.

[dkfire]

Are your exe file build on a xp or win 7 machine ?

if xp, have you tried to rebuild the exe on a windows 7 ?

[altenbach]

What are the time limiting steps in your code? What does the program actually do? How does it cummunicate with external hardware?

I assume that "transitioning" means you are using the exactly same hardware and just formatted and installed a new OS. I also assume that you did not simply install W7 over XP (not sure if this would even work). Upgrading the RAM would certainly be something to try.

Are all the drivers OK? Are automatic OS updates turned off? (A freshly installed W7 will spend a lot of energy and resources to update everything in sight, so let's make sure that is not an interference.

[alpha1]

Hi Sean,

I've sent you an email regarding this issue from uksupport@ni.com yesterday, after you talked about it with my colleague Kirtesh. I've got a few questions to help troubleshoot what the problem may be;

1) Is it just one single VI, or a collection of files in a project?

2) What troubleshooting steps have you taken so far?

3) Have you checked to see how much your RAM and page files are used & are available?

4) What are you doing in the VI? Are you able to post this or send it by reply to my email?

5) Which specific drivers are you working with (e.g. NI-DAQmx), and which versions -- have you updated them to ensure everything is optimised for Windows 7?

6) Have you tried a PC with a fresh install of Windows 7 rather than an upgrade?

Feel free to reply to either my email or this post. If you reply to this post, I shall close the current SR that is open so we can work on it here. 

[SeanJ]

Hi alpha1,

I'm afraid I mised your mail.

The issue arose with a vi that contained hundreds of subvi's.  We tried to isolate the vi requiring the extra time using elasped timers. Ram 4GB and intel i3 core processors were not being overly taxed.  We used a new PC rather than an upgrade.

Eventually, the delay was tracked to the VISA configure serial port vi, which was taking around 200ms rather than 1ms.

The particular serial port was using a usb to serial converter. 

We replaced the converter with a standard serial card and this fixed the issue.  So rather than a labVIEW issue, it looks like it was a win 7 driver/ hardware issue.

Thanks to everyone for their comments and suggestions.

Sean

[alpha1]

Hi Sean,

No problem, glad to know that you've managed to find the root cause and resolve the issue. Thanks for posting your steps as well so it helps in case anyone else has a similar issue in future! 🙂