windows 7 migration problems / solutions

[freemason]

Hello,

I have been tasked with migrating several exe's to windows 7 that have to be run on on a windows 7 laptop and windows 7 PXI

the exe s generated were written in LabVIEW versions 

6.1

7.1

8

8.5

2011 sp1

2012

I dont have the win7 laptop or pxi yet but i am to anticipate problems that will occur during the migration.

what would be the problems i might face.please share if someone had gone through this procedure.

I want to convert all of them to 2012 and install only one run-time engine 2012.

some of the 6.1,7.1 and 8.5 versions of the progams donot have the source code, just have the exes. is it possible to upconvert exes to 2012 without source code and still make it work with 2012 runtime on win 7.

any help is highly appreciated. 

Thanks

[crossrulz]

It isn't really upgrading to programs to the new OS that will be the problem.  The real problem will be making sure the drivers still work.

EXEs cannot be converted.  They are fully compiled programs with no code to recompile with.  If you want them to be upgraded, you need to have the source code.

Anything older than LabVIEW 8.6 is not supported with Windows 7.  You can try it, but there are no guarantees.

And probably your biggest obstacle will be the DAQ drivers.  LabVIEW 6.1 and 7.1 VIs were typically written with NI DAQ, now Traditional DAQ.  Traditional DAQ has not been supported for many years.  You will want to change the code to use DAQmx if at all possible.

[chembo]

I hate to say that, but If the software uses DAQ (Traditional DAQ) and DAQmx, and you don't have the source code, this is almost impossible. I can talk about DAQ/DAQmx, because we have the same situation in our company, but there maybe also other incompatibilities.

We have a lot of test software in LabVIEW 7.1. Since 2-3 years we started using initially LabVIEW 2011 and now 2013. Luckily we have all the source code.

Here is a link to DAQmx and LabVIEW Version Compatibility and to the Traditional (Legacy) NI-DAQ and LabVIEW Version Compatibility

You cannot install two DAQmx drivers in the same Windows partition, but you can have DAQmx and Traditional DAQ. There is a compatibility issue with DAQmx 8.8/8.9 and  Traditional DAQ. It was fixed in later DAQmx versions.

If you want to go with LabVIEW 2012, the lowest supported DAQmx version will be 9.1.5, but this version doesn't work with any LabVIEW version lower than 8.6.

Only Traditional DAQ 7.4.4 covers LabVIEW 7.1 through LabVIEW 2012, but most likely your software is using DAQmx. If the older software including LabVIEW 7.1, 8 and 8.5 uses Traditional DAQ, then you are fine, but there is still problem with your LabVIEW 6.1 software without source code.

We didn't have any problems running LabVIEW 7.1 on Windows 7 32-bit computers with DAQmx 8.8. But our applications don't require high data acquisitions rates, so there is no guarantee that everything will work elsewhere. We didn't have also problems running LabVIEW 2013 executable simultaneously with LabVIEW 7.1 executable (NO DAQ) on the same machine.

Our workaround for now is dual boot Windows. On the first partition DAQmx drivers for LabVIEW 2013, on the second partition drivers for LabVIEW 7.1. We are trying gradually to move all currently used software to LabVIEW 2013. I didn't have for now any problems loading the 7.1 programs in LabVIEW 2013.

Nick