LV Project Woes

[bmoyer]

My main reason for writing this post is not that I expect solutions to my problem, but that I need a way to vent the problems that I've been experiencing with the projects files.

I recently had to reinstall LabVIEW 8.5 (also 6.1, 7.1.1, 8.0.1) on my PC (basically I had to start from scratch) and now my LabVIEW project files don't work! LabVIEW hangs when opening them until I end-task LabVIEW. So basically I'm left with recreating them from scratch! You would think that if LabVIEW can't find a file in the project, it would tell you instead of hanging. I see project nightmares ahead (and now) if NI doesn't fix this soon. Every file has to be in exactly the right place or else you have to start over (or try to manually parse through the .lvproj xml file with hundreds of files in it to determine which one(s) "might" be the cause).

I've seen similar problems with LV project files in the past and fortunately I was able to retrieve an archive of the project file, but this time this isn't working!

Can anyone else relate?

Bruce

[rkanders]

I have had it happen as well, and fairly frequently. My solution has been source code control. If there is a problem I diff it and find offending VIs and then manually fix it or just revert.

Reinis

[bmoyer]

QUOTE (rkanders @ Mar 27 2008, 02:17 PM)

I have had it happen as well, and fairly frequently. My solution has been source code control. If there is a problem I diff it and find offending VIs and then manually fix it or just revert.

Reinis

I usually can do what you described (using a backup lvproj file), but since I just reinstalled LV, I have a feeling that there are other reasons why it's not working. I noticed in the lvproj file that there was a reference to LV8.2.1 runtime in the Installer so I tried went back and installed LV8.2.1 but it's nearly impossible to tell if this helped any because the project file still hangs.

:headbang:

Bruce

[Tomi Maila]

Just to make sure you did everything correctly.

- Did you uninstall everything before reinstalling?

- Did you install LabVIEW version in the order from oldest to newest?

- Did you use the same LabVIEW version to open the project file as you created it with?

- Did you install all the possible libraries and toolkits you might have been using for all LabVIEW versions?

If you have done everything as described, please try to open the project file with LabVIEW 8.5. It has more advanced support for solving cross-linkage problems. Also try to open the project in another computer. It may be that your new LabVIEW installation has corrupted for some reason. Or maybe some DLL LabVIEW is using is corrupted.

[bmoyer]

QUOTE (Tomi Maila @ Mar 27 2008, 03:20 PM)

Just to make sure you did everything correctly.

- Did you uninstall everything before reinstalling?

- Did you install LabVIEW version in the order from oldest to newest?

- Did you use the same LabVIEW version to open the project file as you created it with?

- Did you install all the possible libraries and toolkits you might have been using for all LabVIEW versions?

If you have done everything as described, please try to open the project file with LabVIEW 8.5. It has more advanced support for solving cross-linkage problems. Also try to open the project in another computer. It may be that your new LabVIEW installation has corrupted for some reason. Or maybe some DLL LabVIEW is using is corrupted.

Yes, I unistalled "everything" before reinstalling. I even used the msiBlast.exe to make sure which took an extremely long time because it asked me after almost every uninstall if I wanted to reboot.

I installed LV from oldest to newest except for LV8.2.1 which I installed after 8.5 (because I saw in the lvproj file that it had a line in it with for the LV8.2.1 runtime). My original thinking was, "why do I need to install 8.2.1 since 8.5 converts back to 8.0".

The project file worked fine with 8.5 before I reinstalled everything.

I did go back and install SignalExpress that comes on the 8.5 CD because apparently if you don't install this, the NI_AALPro.lvlib, NI_AALBase.lvlib, NI_AALBLAS.lvlib (Advance Analysis libraries?) are not installed (why am I forced to install SignalExpress in order to get this library?)

Bruce

[Tomi Maila]

QUOTE (bmoyer @ Mar 27 2008, 10:19 PM)

I installed LV from oldest to newest except for LV8.2.1 which I installed after 8.5 (because I saw in the lvproj file that it had a line in it with for the LV8.2.1 runtime).

Your problem may then be the fact you installed LV 8.2.1 after 8.5. To verify test with a machine with clean install of LV 8.5 only. You can for example install LV on a http://expressionflow.com/2007/05/14/setting-up-windows-xp-on-vmware-server/' target="_blank">virtual machine. Also I think the AAxxxx are part of Advance Signal Processing Toolkit 7.5 so you can simply install that if you have it. It is easiest to install the toolkit after all LabVIEWs so that it is available on every LabVIEW version.

Tomi

[Steve Mate]

Bruce - I had a problem with project files in LabVIEW 8.5. My symptoms were different; whenever I selected created new LabVIEW project, LabVIEW would immediately shut down. The solution was found in this link, and then the subsequent link in step 4.

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch...A8?OpenDocument

It refers to a corrupt MAX database, which seems unrelated but in my case fixed the problem. It might be worth taking a look at just in case.

Like you, my problem occurred right after installing.

Good luck,

Steve

www.co-efficient.com

[bmoyer]

QUOTE (Steve Mate @ Mar 27 2008, 05:35 PM)

Bruce - I had a problem with project files in LabVIEW 8.5. My symptoms were different; whenever I selected created new LabVIEW project, LabVIEW would immediately shut down. The solution was found in this link, and then the subsequent link in step 4.

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch...A8?OpenDocument

It refers to a corrupt MAX database, which seems unrelated but in my case fixed the problem. It might be worth taking a look at just in case.

Like you, my problem occurred right after installing.

Good luck,

Steve

www.co-efficient.com

Steve, thanks for the tip, (I had previously seen your entry when searching the NI forums) although, like you said, I think this problem is different. I'll see if I can install a VM like Tomi suggested, but it's usually difficult to get a hold of XP disks at work to install it (I think that's why I never was successful at installing a VM before).

Tomi, thanks for your help too. I see the benefit of practicing on a VM and installing 8.5 on it (hopefully I can get this to fly with IT), although I don't know if this would fix the problem with the lvproj file containing an entry for the LV8.2.1 runtime (since a clean install of 8.5 wouldn't have 8.2.1). Fortunately I only have a couple of projects (2) in 8.5 (1 large project and 1 small) and am almost finished recreating the project structure of the large project, but this was days of work wasted that I wasn't expecting.

Bruce

[orko]

Bruce,

I had problems with a project that I upgraded from 8.2 to 8.5. Initially it worked great, but then I opened up a typedef cluster to edit it and LabVIEW crashed. Subsequent tries to open the VI that contained the typedef hung LabVIEW. I cannot remember if I had problems opening up the project itself, but I feel your pain.

In my case, the problem turned out to not be in the control I was editing at all. It turned out that there was an element of that cluster that linked to another cluster that had a typedefed reference to a graph that was causing the issue. (yeah...)

The way I solved this was to create a folder outside of the search path, and do a kind of binary search. I took half of my folders in the project directory and moved them away, then tried to open the VI. If it crashed immediately, I restored the folders and took the other half away. I did this until I was down to a few Typedefs, and eventually found the one that was choking LabVIEW. Recreating this control and re-linking my VI's solved the crashes.

With this and another example that one of my colleagues showed me, I am almost 100% convinced that older 8.x versions sometimes let linking errors slip by, and LV8.5 is better at preventing this...if you start with 8.5. Converting over to 8.5 can be painful if you have linking errors already existing in an older version of 8.x.

This may or may not help, it's just based on my observations so far. Good luck!

[wallyabcd]

Hello Bruce;

Sorry to hear of your problem...

I suspect it may be similar to mine.

You didn't mention though, is your target an RT system ?

If you're then read on...

I installed labview 8.5.1 and open a project that worked fine under labview 8.01.

Now after resolving some issues concerning the fpga, I was able to compile my project.

After updating my realtime chassis, I copied all the files to the usual places.

Immediate crash, with message on a connected screen:

MKL FATAL ERROR: Cannot load neither mkl_p3.dll nor mkl_def.dll

I decided to replace all my dependencies with the older versions and this worked.

I was able at least to boot my application.

Then one by one I started exchanging them for the new ones until the RT system failed.

At which point I knew it was "lvanlys.dll", yes the advance analysis library.

To make a long story short, the App builder for some reason an upgraded version of this file

in 8.5.1 which no longer appears able to work under the RT system.

Upon searching the NI installation directory on my PC, I found an RT version of this file named lvanlys_RT.dll

Replacing the old lvanlys.dll with the above file also worked, but putting both of them at the same time on the Rt

fails. It seems NI is looking for the old file first and then if it doesn't find it, the second one.

Trying to run my program in the dev environment makes it behave just like yours.

So you can try replacing the above file like I did.

QUOTE (bmoyer @ Mar 27 2008, 05:44 PM)

My main reason for writing this post is not that I expect solutions to my problem, but that I need a way to vent the problems that I've been experiencing with the projects files.

I recently had to reinstall LabVIEW 8.5 (also 6.1, 7.1.1, 8.0.1) on my PC (basically I had to start from scratch) and now my LabVIEW project files don't work! LabVIEW hangs when opening them until I end-task LabVIEW. So basically I'm left with recreating them from scratch! You would think that if LabVIEW can't find a file in the project, it would tell you instead of hanging. I see project nightmares ahead (and now) if NI doesn't fix this soon. Every file has to be in exactly the right place or else you have to start over (or try to manually parse through the .lvproj xml file with hundreds of files in it to determine which one(s) "might" be the cause).

I've seen similar problems with LV project files in the past and fortunately I was able to retrieve an archive of the project file, but this time this isn't working!

Can anyone else relate?

Bruce