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Blue Screen Of Death corrupted my VI


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Yesterday I was working on a new VI that I created few days ago, when a Blue Screen Of Death happened. When I restarted the PC and LabVIEW, I was amazed to see that LabVIEW's startup window didn't remember any of my recent projects and recent files. It seems that the BSOD did something pretty bad to my LabVIEW install. So I loaded my project manually, only to find out that LabVIEW can't open my new VI because it's corrupted.

 

Unfortunately I had not yet performed any commit of this VI to our repository, so I pretty much lost few days of work. I have the auto-save enabled so I had a look in the LVAutoSave folder, but it was almost empty, and my VI was not there.

 

At this point I'll take any suggestion as to what I can do to recover my VI!! Since it's a binary file, I can't open it in a text editor and see if I can manually fix it...

 

If you don't have any suggestion, I will also take words of compassion! You can imagine I pretty much want to do that right now:    :throwpc:

 

Thanks! 

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Thanks ShaunR,

 

I restarted the coding of the VI from scratch and after 4 hours it's already back to where it was before the BSOD. I had the code printed on my memory... I'll still have a look at your link for my personal knowledge base...

 

I feel much better now. The new code is also cleaner than the original one...  :cool:

 

And yes, it looks like it still happens. I'm running LV2011 on Windows 7.

 

Edit: My LabVIEW environment really had a kind of reset. I lost all my preferences about palettes and so on...

Edited by Manudelavega
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The new code is also cleaner than the original one...  :cool:

 

Yeah, that tends to happen.

 

For next time, current OSs perform automatic backups of their own. On Windows, you can access previous versions of a file by right clicking it in Explorer. You can probably also use this to restore your LabVIEW.ini file.

Edited by Yair
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You're right, Windows does keep previous versions but on my PC it seems it only makes a backup every 8 days. And my VI was more recent than that. However I did restore my LabVIEW.ini after you advised me to do so and that did the trick to restore my environment  :worshippy:

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That happened to me previously as well, when a VI became corrupted and LabVIEW didn't want to open it.  I don't recall the details of the problem but I remember that I was fortunately able to open the VI in a more recent version of LabVIEW (I think that the corrupted VI was in LV2011 and I opened it with LV2014) and then saving it back to 2011 did the trick and allowed me to recover all of my changes.  Might be worth a try if it happens again and if you're not already in the most recent version of LV!

 

And for the BSOD, yes, I still see them every now and then in Win 7.  I think that they are mostly linked to faulty third party instrument drivers however.

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That happened to me previously as well, when a VI became corrupted and LabVIEW didn't want to open it.  I don't recall the details of the problem but I remember that I was fortunately able to open the VI in a more recent version of LabVIEW (I think that the corrupted VI was in LV2011 and I opened it with LV2014) and then saving it back to 2011 did the trick and allowed me to recover all of my changes.  Might be worth a try if it happens again and if you're not already in the most recent version of LV!

 

And for the BSOD, yes, I still see them every now and then in Win 7.  I think that they are mostly linked to faulty third party instrument drivers however.

 

Definitely not an Instrument Driver thing.  :D

 

The only thing besides faulty hardware that can still create BSODs in Windows are faulty device drivers. They run in the kernel space of Windows and there is really nothing that Windows can do to prevent a kernel driver from corrupting its memory. That is why 64 Bit Windows (and the latest versions of MacOS X) by default only allow to load signed drivers. In order to get a driver signed the manufacturer has to submit it to some test review process and that tries to make sure the driver conforms to certain test scenarios in order to make sure it will work flawlessly in all but the very most extreme exceptions.

 

Today a BSOD is a pretty reliable sign that you have some hardware problem in your system, such as a bad harddisk, PCI bridge, or memory that can cause temporary dropouts.

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I was fortunately able to open the VI in a more recent version of LabVIEW (I think that the corrupted VI was in LV2011 and I opened it with LV2014) and then saving it back to 2011 did the trick and allowed me to recover all of my changes.

 

Unfortunately LabVIEW 2014 also sees it as corrupted. I guess my VI is even more corrupted than yours  :lol:

 

What's weird about the BSOD is that it's on a laptop that is brand new, and I never connected it to any hardware except the usual mouse and keyboard...

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What's weird about the BSOD is that it's on a laptop that is brand new, and I never connected it to any hardware except the usual mouse and keyboard...

 

I didn't mean external hardware but what is build into the system. A  memory module, a built in HD, the system board. Together with a less than perfect thermal design that can mean that the hardware gets hot enough that some less than perfect hardware gets into soft errors.

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Unfortunately LabVIEW 2014 also sees it as corrupted. I guess my VI is even more corrupted than yours  :lol:

 

What's weird about the BSOD is that it's on a laptop that is brand new, and I never connected it to any hardware except the usual mouse and keyboard...

 

Thats not weird; thats a lemon. Send it back and get a new one.

 

I had a couple of strange corruptions recently. Couldn't open VIs in LV2009 64 bit. Could load the project but when I tried to open this one particular VI;  LV would just disappear. Opened it up in LV2009 32 bit and it was fine. Saved it back down (in 32 bit) then reopened in 64 bit and problem solved. Thanked every god I could think of and moved on :D

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