LV2012 installers for Windows 10 (a .NET issue!)

[PA-Paul]

Hi All, 

I have an application built in labview 2012 which we have been distributing fine with an installer built in labview 2012 for some time. Recently, a colleague tried to install the application onto a windows 10 machine and although the installation process seemed to go smoothly, for some reason, one of the two exe's distributed by the installer gives me the ever so helpful "This VI is not executable. Full development version is required. This VI is not executable. Full development version is required. This VI is not executable. Full development version is required. This VI is not executable. Full development version is required. This VI is not executable. Full development version is required. This VI is not executable. Full development version is required. ..... (you get the picture!)" error.

As an experiment I set up two clean virtual machines, one running windows 7 SP1, one running windows 10. I ran the same installer on both. In windows 7, I got a prompt saying that .NET framework 4.6.1 needed to be installed first, and that happened automatically, and after that the installer continued and everything worked fine (including the exe in question). On windows 10 I got no such warning. The installer ran through and the exe failed with the error message described above. 

On the Win10 VM, I then went in to "Turn windows features on/off" and although there's a tick in the ".NET framework 4.6 advanced features", there's no specific sign of 4.6.1. for a test, I added a tick to add .NET framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0) and installed that. That made my .exe run fine.... 

So.... is there any way to force the LV installer to prompt for/install the necessary .net "stuff" when running in Windows 10? Anything else I can do to automate things so that our customers dont need to manually add .net support for the program to run if they're using windows 10?

Thanks in advance!

 

Paul

[Tim_S]

What you ran into is that, by default, LabVIEW 2012 uses .NET 2. There is a significant change to .NET 3 and later that requires different behavior down in the bowels to use. NI has an article on how to specify using later .NET versions. LabVIEW 2015 uses .NET 4 by default (not sure the version where the switch occurs). One option would be to have LabVIEW use .NET 4 as that should be present on Windows 10.

The only other options I can see are

1. Have an exe that would run before the installer to verify all the required components are installed.
2. Don't use the LabVIEW installer as other installer applications can perform this type of checking

[PA-Paul]

Thanks Tim,

What I find strange is that on a fresh windows 7 install, the installer built with LV tells me I need first to install .NET4.6.1 and then does it. Why cant it do something similar in windows 10 and alert me to the fact that .NET installs are needed and do those for me! 

Ho hum, another reason (asside from DAQmx 16 no being compatible with LV2012) to think about migrating up to a newer version!

Thanks again

Paul

[ak_nz]

9 hours ago, Tim_S said:

What you ran into is that, by default, LabVIEW 2012 uses .NET 2. There is a significant change to .NET 3 and later that requires different behavior down in the bowels to use. NI has an article on how to specify using later .NET versions. LabVIEW 2015 uses .NET 4 by default (not sure the version where the switch occurs). One option would be to have LabVIEW use .NET 4 as that should be present on Windows 10.

The only other options I can see are

1. Have an exe that would run before the installer to verify all the required components are installed.
2. Don't use the LabVIEW installer as other installer applications can perform this type of checking

Out of interest it has to do with the version of the run-time CLR rather than the framework (which has the runtime as well as bas libraries etc,).

LV2012 and earlier - use CLR 2.0 (which exists in .NET Framework 2.0 - 3.5)

LV2013 and later - use CLR 4.0 (which exists in .NET Framework 4.0 and later - 4.6.2 inclusive)

You can easily download the .NET Framework 3.5 offline installer and add this install to your installer as an action. You can run the offline installer in "silent mode" so that it installs or bypasses if installation already exists.