Additional installers needed for serial port access XP and Win7 32 bit

[AKA_TG]

During our Win7 upgrades I had to reinstall an old reliable program we use internally on a few in house PC's.

The program reads and writes to a single serial port (usually 'COM1' ) for an external device. Its not very complicated.

I was asked to install my simple program on a Windows 7 machine. A LabVIEW nieve target so to say.

After a number of attempts at creating a suitable installer to provide this support on a fresh target machine

I ended up using the following additional installers. It finally worked with this list.

NI LabVIEW Run time engine 2010 SP1

NI measurement and automation explorer 5.0

NI serial 3.8

NI-VISA configuration support

NI-VISA runtime 5.1

NI-Visa Server 5.1

I have no idea which ones are not needed in this listing above.

My Q is which ones if any are not required to use a serial port and if they are all required (to use a serial port) then  the next Q would be "Are you kidding me?"

Thank You

[Dennis_Knutson]

You only NI-Serial if you are using an NI device. You don't need VISA Server unless you are sharing the device over a network. Max and the configuration support help with debug and troubleshooting. I always install them. Of course, the LabVIEW runtime is always required.

[AKA_TG]

Thanks Dennis,

OK so I can safely  remove

NI serial

and VISA server

that leaves (for a 2010 SP1 32 bit Win7 installation)

     NI LabVIEW Run time engine 2010 SP1

     NI measurement and automation explorer 5.0

     NI-VISA configuration support

     NI-VISA runtime 5.1

The reason I asked in the first place is because one of my IT guys is amazed that a number of separate installations are required just to access a serial port through LabVIEW.

Our Win7 admin lockouts are bringing this behavior front and center. He has to enter his name and password 5 or 6 times!

Also because the NI-Max support is required for it to work the installation takes some considerable time; about 7-10 minutes maybe; I did not clock it.

Without Max it would be a heartbeat comparatively.

[tst]

You need the LV RTE to run LV programs (just like you need the Java RTE and C RTE to run programs built in those languages) and you need the VISA RT to use VISA functions (which is what NI uses for serial communication, among other things). You don't need any of the others.

[AKA_TG]

Thank you tst

I am sure you are correct based primarily on seeing your contributions to this and LAVA over a number of years!

Unfortunately, I cannot check your assertion since the IT guy is gone with his admin password now.

 It did not work when I installed

NI LabVIEW Run time engine 2010 SP1

NI serial 3.8

NI-VISA configuration support

NI-VISA runtime 5.1

I'll assume for now that installing the NI-VISA configuration support somehow committed me to installing MAX and perhaps that is why my first attempt

to look smart and trendy blew up in my face with an error saying something along the lines of "VIsa or a library used by VISA cannot be located" ...

When I added the next two products to the listing above 

NI measurement and automation explorer 5.0

NI-Visa Server 5.1

It did work.

Make any sense?

[tst]

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AKA_TG wrote:

Make any sense?

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Not specifically, but I don't know all the intricacies of VISA well enough. I can tell you that for basic use of the VISA functions you only need the VISA RT because I've done that multiple times on computers that didn't need MAX or anything else. Maybe you used something which required something more.

[rolfk]

I believe that the VISA configuration support is the component that installs into MAX to allow MAX to configure the VISA subsystem. So selecting it and not MAX will indeed likely cause a problem as the VISA configuration support can not find a valid MAX installation to get installed into.

[AKA_TG]

Now that makes sense.

Thank you rolf and tst.

I will try it when I get another chance at a LV naive win7 PC.

[RTSLVU]

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@AKA_TG wrote:

Our Win7 admin lockouts are bringing this behavior front and center. He has to enter his name and password 5 or 6 times!

---

You need to have a long talk with your IT guys.

Unless you are working in a bank or possibly for a government agency, there is no good reason for that level of user lock down.

We broke our IT department of that power trip back in Windows 2000/XP days when Agilent's data logger applications required Administrator privileges to save data to a file.

Now we have a series of ATE and "test machines" that are not administered by the IT department. They have restricted or no access to the corporate network but otherwise are open.

[AKA_TG]

Oh boy. Nice to hear someone won one for the little guy.

Naw I don't think my Corp is gonna be swayed to abandon the their paranoia.

We are fighting them however 🙂