Easy Print VI panel not working with 64-bit windows vista

[Sam Dastidar]

We have a significantly sized application developed in Labview 8.2.1 that is designed to work on a standalone computer. This application uses "Easy Print VI Panel" to print report pages which are basically front panels of various VIs. The application also prints some report pages using the "Print Report" module. Typically we use the application builder and use the generated installer to install the application on a target computer. We also include the appropriate Run-Time engine and NI VISA 4.1. The applications works exactly as designed on all versions of 32-bit Windows (ME, XP, Vista). Now, when this application was installed on a machine running Windows Vista 64-bit, attempts to print reports resulted in a lot of blank pages. I noticed that the report pages that are based on the "Easy Print VI Panel" module were blank whereas the ones that are based on the "Print Report" module were not blank.

To further troubleshoot, I created a very small application. The only function of this application is to use the "Easy Print VI Panel" to print the front panel of another VI that I bundled inside the application. I observed the same behavior.  

From what I can tell, either:

1. "Easy Print VI Panel" with Labview 8.2.1 is not compatible with Windows Vista 64-bit

2. The Labview Run-Time Engine 8.2.1 has some incompatibility with Windows Vista 64-bit (I have not tried to install the full development system on the 64-bit Vista computer)

Any insights as to what may be causing this? or does anyone know of a fix for this issue. I am attaching the latter simple test code to the post.

Thanks

[LaRisa_M]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for posting. We haven't had any reports of this behavior before, so I don't have a work-around or bug fix for you. I'm going to track down a 64-bit Vista machine and see if I can reproduce the error. If it's a bug, we definitely want to find it! I'll post again with the results of my test.

[Sam Dastidar]

Any luck replicating/solving this problem?

Thanks

[LaRisa_M]

Sorry Sam, I couldn't get my hands on a 64-bit Vista machine to tinker with your VI. I got a little obsessed with trying to get ahold of a computer to test it out on, that I overlooked actually taking the time to think about the problem. But, now that I'm thinking about it, which operating system did you build this application on? Sometimes an application that was built in another OS than it's running on will have problems caused by the differences in the OS. I'd like to try building the application in 64-bit Vista and deploying it to another 64-bit Vista machine, but unfortunately, I can't test this out myself. My gut feeling is that the application is acting up because it wasn't built in 64-bit Vista, not because the Easy Print VI or the 8.2.1 Run-Time Engine themselves are incompatible with 64-bit Vista. If you can, please test out that theory. That will definitely help determine if it's truly a bug or not.

[Sam Dastidar]

It was built in 32-bit XP. So maybe that is it. But that brings up more questions:

Re:  "Sometimes an application that was built in another OS than it's running on will have problems caused by the differences in the OS."

By another OS, did you mean only 32/64-bit or even XP/Vista? If that is the case that increases my problems. Are you saying that some VIs will compile differently if built in XP but, say, are running as an executable on Vista? That would mean we have to develop platform specific versions of the software (because some problems like the print error is easily spotted but there may be some that are not).

How extensive is this problem? Do you have a list of VIs or is it all of them?

[LaRisa_M]

Generally, executables built with the LabVIEW Application Builder on any Windows operating system can run on any other Windows operating system, but there are exceptions. There are some operating system-specific system calls that won't work on all operating systems. For example, Windows NT is much stricter about memory issues and that's been known to cause some problems. In this case, the printing function may be called in a different way, I don't know for sure. Our recommendation to everyone is that you should test your executables on the target OS before distributing them to be absolutely safe.

[Eriquito]

This was reported to R&D (# 188673) for further investigation.

It appears to still persist as of LabVIEW 2009, but is specific to certain HP printers.  If you encounter this problem with a non-HP printer, please reply to this thread and list the make/model you are seeing it with.  A possible temporary workaround is to either use the Print Report.vi, or install a PDF printer (such as CutePDF), print to a PDF, and then use an application such as Adobe Acrobat to finally print the result out.  Thanks for the feedback!

[Sam Dastidar]

I never saw this last message. Otherwise it would have saved me some time. I was unable to revisit this issue until recently and I reached the same conclusion. The VI did not work with HP Deskjet 5700 series, 5900 series, 6900 series but semed to work on Brother, Canon, Epson printers. All my previous tests in early 2009 were performed on HP 6900 series and it did not strike me until recently to try a different printer.

Did R&D find a solution? Does it have something to do with how Labview is interacting with the HP driver for the 64-bit OS (the 32-bit version works fine). The problem persisted into Windows 7. Please let me know as we would prefer not to have to change the printer model.

Message Edited by Sam Dastidar on 04-27-2010 01:15 PM

[Peñata]

Hi Sam,

Unfortunately, this CAR has not been fixed yet. Keep an eye on the release notes of future releases of LabVIEW to see when this gets fixed. I apologize for the inconvenience. 

Aaron P

National Instruments

Applications Engineer

http://www.ni.com/support