LabVIEW Crashing with Silver button on new hardware

[cowen]

Guys,

I would like to ask for a favour from other engineers.

We have a problem that is causing LabVIEW to crash. After a lot of effort, we found the exact functions causing the crash and have prepared some simple test VI's (attached).

I would like to ask other LabVIEW developers to test these VI's according to the procedure below.

1. Close LabVIEW – this is important!!

2. Open LabVIEW and open ‘test_8.2.1.vi’. You do not need to run it – opening it is enough.

3. Open and Run ‘test_2011.vi’.

4. Click the silver button (called ‘Boolean’).

5. On our newest industrial PC's, this crashes immediately. On older models there is no problem.

The crash only occurs with the silver button.

Interestingly, if you open and run test_2011.vi first and click the button. you can then load the other VI and start and stop the VI's in any order and the crash does not occur. That is until you stop LabVIEW and start the process above again.

The response from NI is that the problem must be with our industrial PC's and "Don't use the Silver Controls". Not using the silver controls is no problem of course, but I am interested how common this problem is.

[cowen]

Ah - and now the attachment!!

crashtest.zip

[asbo]

The crash does not repro in LV2011 on Win7 x64.

[cowen]

Thanks asbo.

I should have perhaps mentioned these VI's are saved using LV2011SP1.

I think our problem is hardware related and not linked to operating system. However, it is good to know the operating system is OK.

We have essentially identical PC's running windows XP. The crash only occurs on PC's with the latest motherboard revision (although of course the bios could also have been updated).

[crelf]

The response from NI is that the problem must be with our industrial PC's and "Don't use the Silver Controls". Not using the silver controls is no problem of course, but I am interested how common this problem is.

That's a valid statement for a workaround, but do you know if they've escalated it into a CAR to be further investigated? My gut tells me that there are a few people in LabVIEW R&D that would be interested in this issue.

The crash does not repro in LV2011 on Win7 x64.

I don't have any issues on my PC - although it's the same model as asbo's (Lenovo T510), with Win7 64 and LabVIEW 2011 32bit SP1 installed.

[bmoyer]

No issue here (on a Dell Precision T3500 64-bit Win7, LV2011 SP1).

[cowen]

That's a valid statement for a workaround, but do you know if they've escalated it into a CAR to be further investigated? My gut tells me that there are a few people in LabVIEW R&D that would be interested in this issue.

I have no information that they have escalated the issue. In this case I assume nothing has been done. I will contact them and ask the question.

I can live without the silver controls, but is this highlighting a bigger issue behind???? I have no idea.

It is a valid statement that maybe this issue is with the industrial PC. I am in discussions with the PC manufacturer regarding this problem, however, this occurs only if a specific function in LabVIEW is used!! I am not sure how much luck I will have convincing them!

[asbo]

I would hazard a guess that do a repair or uninstall/reinstall on LabVIEW will remedy the issue. How many machines does it present on?

[cowen]

I would hazard a guess that do a repair or uninstall/reinstall on LabVIEW will remedy the issue. How many machines does it present on?

Hey Asbo, not this time. ;-)

We have 16 - 20 PC'S of one specification and this crash does not occur. Thex have been working reliably for many months.

We had 1 PC that started crashing. We uninstalled and then reinstalled LabVIEW but the crash still occurred.

We then restaged the PC back to its 'as supplied' status and reinstalled LabVIEW. Again LabVIEW crashed.

Finally we noticed the different mainboard number. So we took a couple of PC's from stock with this new mainboard and installed LabVIEW. The same trial was performed and LabVIEW crashed on them all.

Take away the silver control and all work well.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

Hey Asbo, not this time. ;-)

We have 16 - 20 PC'S of one specification and this crash does not occur. Thex have been working reliably for many months.

We had 1 PC that started crashing. We uninstalled and then reinstalled LabVIEW but the crash still occurred.

We then restaged the PC back to its 'as supplied' status and reinstalled LabVIEW. Again LabVIEW crashed.

Finally we noticed the different mainboard number. So we took a couple of PC's from stock with this new mainboard and installed LabVIEW. The same trial was performed and LabVIEW crashed on them all.

Take away the silver control and all work well.

Haven't checked out how they did the silver controls, but being graphics and all I have a suspicion that it is either a Video Driver or maybe even specifically a GPU issue. Can you see if the different revision motherboards use some kind of different chipset, or at least revision thereof. What about the video driver?