Anyone successfully activate the 2023 Q1 Community Edition yet?

[OneOfTheDans]

I develop LabVIEW full time at work and am finally trying out Community Edition for some home projects.

The latest version of Community Edition happened to be 32-bit LabVIEW 2023 Q1. I downloaded it using my NI account and installed it to a fresh Windows 10 VM, but I haven't been able to activate it yet. There are plenty of posts from a year or two ago where people had problems. I tried a couple of the suggestions, like disabling IPv6, adblocking, and tracker blocking during the download and activation. This didn't help.

NI has not magically detected and given me a license for Community Edition, so when I try to activate, it just finds one of my LabVIEW Pro licenses from work (which I do not wish to use for home projects).

Has anyone setup 2023 Q1 Community Edition successfully yet? Are there any tricks?

If there's a smoking gun or known issue that's great news, but if this is some chronic problem with NI's supposedly easy on-ramp for new developers, I don't think I have the patience to work through it on the weekends when I'm not getting paid for the hassle.

[santo_13]

NI's expected process to automatically activate,

1. Login on ni.com
2. Navigate and download LV CE (now NI keeps notes that the logged-in account intended to use CE)
3. Install
4. When prompted to license, log into the same ni.com account, and it will automatically activate the CE version

At first, I skipped #1 and did #2, it did not work, so redid #1 and #2 for NI to register my account, and then reused the previous installation.

[billko]

I know this has nothing to do with your issue, but I would create a separate account for our personal use.  I like to separate my personal LabVIEW from my work LabVIEW as much as possible.

Come to think of it, this actually might help because maybe your LV Community Edition doesn't like your current account for some weird reason.

[OneOfTheDans]

Santosh, unfortunately I did steps 1-4 originally, although I admit it was an accident 🙂 When things didn't work, I also tried redoing steps 1-2 as you suggested, and still it didn't work. I'll try this again more explicitly in case I transposed some detail accidentally.

Bill, interesting about splitting accounts, and I guess you're right that might fix my issue wholesale. How do you maintain personal ownership of your forum account and history if switching companies? Keep that on the personal account? If personal, is it improper to ask work questions on your personal forum account? 

[billko]

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@OneOfTheDans wrote:

Santosh, unfortunately I did steps 1-4 originally, although I admit it was an accident 🙂 When things didn't work, I also tried redoing steps 1-2 as you suggested, and still it didn't work. I'll try this again more explicitly in case I transposed some detail accidentally.

Bill, interesting about splitting accounts, and I guess you're right that might fix my issue wholesale. How do you maintain personal ownership of your forum account and history if switching companies? Keep that on the personal account? If personal, is it improper to ask work questions on your personal forum account? 

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Those are all interesting questions!  I ask all my forum questions through my personal account, whether work-related or not, for continuity's sake; however, official help is always asked for through my "company" account because that's where all my company-related licenses reside.  I've never had to figure out what happens when I leave a company, fortunately.  I suppose I would transfer custody of the account to someone in the company before I left.

I put a "wall" between me and the company I work for so there is a very clear demarcation between what's theirs and what's mine.  For instance, I never do company work on my home computer and (obviously) not my personal work on my work computer.  A clear line drawn between the two worlds makes it easier for you and the company to keep IP straight.

[santo_13]

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@OneOfTheDans wrote:

Santosh, unfortunately I did steps 1-4 originally, although I admit it was an accident 🙂 When things didn't work, I also tried redoing steps 1-2 as you suggested, and still it didn't work. I'll try this again more explicitly in case I transposed some detail accidentally.

Bill, interesting about splitting accounts, and I guess you're right that might fix my issue wholesale. How do you maintain personal ownership of your forum account and history if switching companies? Keep that on the personal account? If personal, is it improper to ask work questions on your personal forum account? 

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Just to add, I have separate professional and personal NI accounts just to separate the license issue specifically for CE. My 2022 CE is licensed on my personal NI account and I don't use it for anything else.

[OneOfTheDans]

Ok, still no luck with NI magically giving a CE license when I (1) login and (2) download the ISO. I wish they simply had a 4th license option for CE so you could "buy now" for $0 and get a serial number like the other 3 tiers.

I'm going to try splitting account into work/personal next, but it'll take some doing. I need to transfer all the work licenses over to a new account so that this (personal) account retains my my forum history.

Thanks for the advice so far. Splitting the accounts might also fix some weirdness with NI using the wrong Company Name for me sometimes when I activate LabVIEW.

[paul_woodpecker]

Hi everyone,

I have had several attempts at installing Labview CE 2023 Q1 on Windows 10. So far, all of these have been unsuccessful.

At my most recent attempt, I uninstalled everything National Instruments from my PC (!), including the registry. I then temporarily disabled the windows firewall, and opened a new NI account with a new email.

Having opened this account, I downloaded the community edition ".iso" file, and installed. However, as for the previous editions, once the software was installed, the NI License Manager did not acknowledge the installation, and therefore it couldn't be activated.

NI really need to sort this problem out.  IMHO the best thing to do would be to give the software a serial number, so that any of the existing activation methods would be posssible.  🤔

[blum22]

Hi OneOfTheDans

With respect to your NI account, you can change the email address linked to your account when changing employers, and (on paper at least) transfer licenses to a coworker's account when you change jobs. I have done this myself multiple times, although a bug on NI's end has kept me as the "owner" of a PXI setup I haven't actually had access to in 8 years.

License-wise, if you go to "my products", you will see that the drop-down menu next to your listed software has a "transfer software license" option. In my experience it works fine.

[OneOfTheDans]

@blum22, I actually followed that process when leaving my last employer so I could retain my forum history. Like you, I have a ghost license from that employer still tied to my account. Transferring licenses has never been so easy for me. Unfortunately it usually requires intervention from NI via a support request, email, or phone call.

@blum22 wrote:

License-wise, if you go to "my products", you will see that the drop-down menu next to your listed software has a "transfer software license" option. In my experience it works fine.

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This morning I created the new "work" account and tried transferring the licenses, but woops, I tried to "unregister" from the personal, then "register" on the work account. Now all those licenses are in limbo "registration in progress" on the line item and "registration failed; contact NI" banner across the top. So I opened the usual support request - hopefully they can fix it quickly, I just want to use this supposedly free, easy on-ramp Community Edition 😄