LabVIEW 6.1 Bug List


LabVIEW 6.1 About Box

This list has been reported to NI as problems existing in LV 6.1. I am hoping to put all of these in a single place available to the info-labview community.

  1. Clipboard Error
    If copy an array of booleans to the clipboard and paste into another application (ie GraphicConverter) it is badly corrupted. It appears that the transparent background is not copied to the clipboard or cleared. This happens on many controls.
    Platforms: Mac

  2. Drop thru clicks from other applications cannot be disabled. Clicks from within LV do not drop thru but other classic applications will drop thru. NI has looked at this and cannot find the problem. The code appears to be correct.
    Platforms: Mac - Corrective Action Request filed

  3. Units bug
    Goal: Display temperature with degC and degF using one control
    1. create a thermometer indicator; show the digital display
    2. edit the digital display to replace it with a second thermometer
    3. add units(degC) to the first indicator.
    4. BUG: the second indicator has DegC units on its label but it displays Kelvin(temp. base unit) values on the scale. LV accepts to change the units of the second indicator to degF but values are not yet consistent with the first.
    Example VI
    Platforms: All

  4. Templates not renamed correctly - Jürg Bögli <juerg_boegli@hotmail.com>
    Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 10:54:19 +0200
    I have made a VI template and saved it as .vit. Now when I open it, it still keeps the original name and type like "Name.vit". This bug appeared with LV6. I already sent a mail to NI last October. The same goes for .ctt controls.

    Meanwhile you can use this workaround (suggested by NI):
    "The behavior can be avoided by using the Select a VI palette function to place it on a diagram as it loads a copy of the template."
    Status: Verified in LV 6.1 Platforms: All

  5. Boolean Format into String - Boyd, Dave <Dave.Boyd@respironics.com>
    Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 15:48:25 -0500
    A boolean formatted with '%s' has always generated the strings 'TRUE' and 'FALSE' (English LV - I don't know about other language versions), regardless of whether one tried to specify width limitations such as '%.1s'. Well, somebody at NI got to this little corner of the code and changed it - now it correctly outputs the truncated strings a la 'T' and 'F'. Along the way to checking this, however, I uncovered a minor bug: A boolean formatted with '%g' causes a runtime assert in 'support.cpp', line 7328. Why ANYBODY would need to format a boolean to a scientific numeric format, I couldn't say...
    Example VI
    Platform NT4, Mac

  6. Serial Port Problems - LewisDrake <LewDrake@ProcessAuto.com>
    Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 11:01:13 -0500
    I've installed LabVIEW 6.1 on 3 computers; 2 Win98SE's and 1 Win2k. On all computers, I get error 37 from the "Serial Port Init.vi" via one of it's subVIs, "Open Serial Driver.vi". It's located under Instrument I/O→I/O Compatibility→Serial Compatibility. It seems to only be a problem with serial port 0. Use of VISA functions will successfully work around this.

    It turns out that this is a problem installing the DSC toolkit. The labview.ini file is modified to have an incorrect list of serial ports. There is a spurious double quote at the beginning of the list. (or lack of a quote at the end). Editing the labview.ini file will fix it.
    Platforms: Windows
    Corrected Platforms: Mac

  7. Serial Port hang during close - <albert.geven@philips.com>
    Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 09:02:50 +0100
    There is a small bug in the visa 6.1 serial library for pc. It was immediately fixed by dan mondrik, (he did send a dll) The bug was in trying to set a not supported baudrate and closing the visa session. The close tried to fix a nonexistent error and lasted about 15 seconds! If you are interested I could send you the dll and a new way of trying to reach the almost correct baudrate.
    Platforms: Windows
    Corrected Platforms: Mac

  8. Revision History Saving - Scott Hannahs <sth@magnet.fsu.edu>
    Date: 2/8/2002
    Writing to the revision history causes crash of O/S. Open a new VI, edit the revision history and add something. Save the VI and then open and edit the revision history again. LV will crash the OS down to the debugger. CAR #2IAFHN4
    Platforms: Mac
    Corrected Platforms: WinXX

  9. Print Report.vi error - "Wright, Michael @ AR" <michael.wright@ar.l-3com.com>
    Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 17:03:36 -0500
    I get "Unknown Error in Print Report.vi", error code -2147352567 when I run Text Report Example.vi in LabVIEW 6.1. My own code that ran OK in LabVIEW 6.0.2 also produces this same result in V6.1. NI was called and it is known and they are working on it.
    Platforms: Windows

  10. Chart scales in property nodes - Hanke, Karl G <karl.g.hanke@boeing.com>
    Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 14:33:33 -0800
    There seems to be a problem with this VI that it wants to resize the chart on the front panel when you toggle the "X & Y scale style" property node for the chart. It was written originally for LV 6.02 and it worked fine.
    Example VI
    Platforms: All

  11. Waveform Chart Drawing - Scott Hannahs <sth@magnet.fsu.edu>
    Date: 3/11/2002
    On a waveform chart after the display is full and is scrolling horizontal, if one uses the "hand" cursor to drag the plot around lines are drawn from the new points to some arbitrary point in the plot. Releasing the hand pointer allows the scrolling to continue but the mess is still there until is scrolls off the screen
    Example VI
    Platforms: Mac and ???

  12. Array Insert in Shift Register - MIKE PORTER <MPORTER@ARIELCORP.COM>
    Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2002 15:28:57 -0500
    Just got off the phone with NI and have verified a bug that occurs in (at the very least) all revisions of Version 6 (including 6.1). The problem appears when you are inserting values into an array in a loop (the array is carried in a shift register) and then try and sort the array. The error also seems to be somewhat independent of the type of data in the array as I have verified it with numbers and strings and observed the same aberrant behavior. Basically, what happens is that the sort function passes the input array on through without actually sorting it, but only every other iteration.

    Greg Mckaskle replies immediately... This shouldn't show up in prior to LV6 since I'm pretty sure it is caused by sub-arrays. These are an efficiency type added under the hood so that more items can be inplace. Bugs like this were found and fixed in the LV6 beta, but obviously not all of them.If you need to work around this, you should drop a single element biuld array set to concatonate mode. Do this upstream of the sort and that should fix the problem. I'd also suggest a comment explaining why this "useless" looking node was placed in the wire.
    Example VI
    Platforms: All

  13. VISA 2.6, NI -485 hardware, and the 'serial wire mode' attribute - Boyd, Dave <Dave.Boyd@respironics.com>
    Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 18:12:49 -0600
    I tried to use the new attribute available with VISA 2.6 for controlling how NI's RS-485 serial devices control 2wire/4wire modes using the following setup:
    PCI-485i/2 (isolated 2-port); NI-Serial 1.45; Windows 2000; NI-VISA 2.6; LV 6.1

    Every time I try to query or set the VISA attribute 'wire mode' VISA returns an error ''0xBFFF001D', implying that the hardware doesn't support the attribute.

    Dan Mondrik (aka Dr. VISA replys):
    Yep, I'm lurking. Yep, it's a bug. It works fine on Windows 9x and on NT 4. It's only a problem on 2000 and XP. Unfortunately, that means you, and there's no workaround we could find. We will fix this in our next version, which is planned to be NI-VISA 3.0. I don't have a non-debug build right now but if you need it, let me know directly and I'll see what we can do for you.

  14. Crash changing text width of dialog ring - andrew johnson <sundial@lmi.net>
    Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 12:19:36 -0800
    Don't do this through a property node (RingText.Width), it's an acknowledged bug in 6.1. If you need to change the width of a ring with a property node, use a ring from the Ring and Enum palette, not from the Dialog palette. The property is "Ring Text → Size → Width" not "Ring Text → Bounds → Width" which has the same property name. You'll get a fatal error in "image.cpp" line 10977.
    Platforms: All

  15. Strict Typedef Cluster - Jim Kring <jim@jimkring.com>
    Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 18:32:55 -0700
    If a control is dropped straight from a palette onto of an instance of a *strict* typedef cluster, LabVIEW 6.1 crashes. This doesn't occur with a non-strict typedef, and it doesn't happen if a control is just moved/copied onto the cluster. It has to be selected from the palette and then placed directly onto the instance of the strict typedef cluster. It crashes every time.
    Platforms: Win2k, Mac

  16. Tab Control Format - Scott Hannahs <sth@magnet.fsu.edu>
    Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 09:22:47 -0400
    Make a new tab control with the following options: bzzzt..... Unusable control! Can't change pages tabs are screwed up, and when you delete it it leaves cruft on the front panel until you force a refresh of the front panel. As a workaround however, after the nastiness shows up you can fix it by changing the position of the tab to top then back again to side. This clears up the problem.
    Platforms: Win2k, Mac

  17. Event Structure Bug - "George Gatling" <ggatling@ccs.nrl.navy.mil>
    Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2002 10:54:31 -0400
    I am crashing LabVIEW 6.1 on Windows 98 with an event structure and an XY Graph. Is anyone else experiencing something similar? The details are simple and as follows:
    1. Drop and XY graph on the panel.
    2. Put it in an event structure on the diagram and trigger on XY → Mouse Down
    3. Drop a while loop around the event structure and wire a true constant or true button to the condition.
    4. Run the VI and double click twice on the plot legend.
    Crash. The message is Error #23 : "window.cpp", line 11518
    Platforms: Win95, Win2k
    Corrected platforms: Mac

Weirdnesses/Unexpected Behavior

  1. DAQ AI Read Time Limit "Hart, Roger H." <hartrh@westinghouse.com>
    Apparently the time limit set for a hardware triggered AI acquisition is really "time limit" value MINUS the buffer size time. i.e. I was acquiring 4 secs of data on a hardware analog trigger with a 10 sec time limit.. and a buffer size 2.4 times # of scans. I couldn't get a single pulse to trigger.. but continuous pulses triggered fine. I finally figured out that the buffer size represented about 9.6 secs and a single pulse would trigger the acquisition only if it occured within 0.4 secs of the acquisition start. I had to increase the time limit value to 20 secs to get a 10.4 sec window for single pulse triggering.

  2. Format into String
    I've noticed a small quirk in the new "Format into String" function. As a default it puts spaces between the concentanted values, whether numbers or strings. This was causing some parsing problems for me and I discovered that it puts a space between the each of the format specificers in the format string. i.e. %d %s %d. The spaces are spaces and not specifiers (\s), so you have to look carefully to notice the small space between the specifiers. If you put a "Format into String" node in a diagram and expand it to have 3 numeric inputs. Then "Command-Click" on the Format terminal and select "Edit Format String" the default string will have spaces that you might not want.
    Status: Verified problem in LV 6.1 Platforms: All

  3. In Range/Coerce Function and NANs - Dave Boyd
    The coerce function does not have well defined behavior when presented with "Not A Number" (NaN).
    Example VI
    Platforms: All

  4. Boolean Array Operator on Empty Array - Uwe Frenz <uwe.frenz@getemed.de>
    Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2002 14:51:55 +0100
    If an empty array is fed to the "AND BOOLEAN ARRAY" operator, the result is true. If is false for the "OR" operation which is the default-default value for booleans.
    Example VI
    Platforms: All

Problems from 6.0.2 not Tested with 6.1

  1. Variant bug Dominic Lavoie <DLavoie@itfoptical.com>
    Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 11:23:54 -0500
    When you transfer value from a cluster to another cluster, you give new name to each element. If you use the variant to flattened string function, you can see the new name in the type descriptor. The problem occurs when you make twice similar unbundle in the same diagram and that even if both part have no connection between them. The problem is that the second variant to flattened string gives the type descriptor of the first one. But that problem occurs only if you make an implicit conversion. When you make an explicit conversion, everything is ok.
    Status: Not tested in LV 6.1

  2. Real Time Stamp Counter "Maillard Patrick" <Patrick.Maillard@ch.bosch.com>
    Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 14:41:46 +0100
    Relative to a thread that has been on the list some time ago, I looked at the rdtsc.vi that is in the NI developer zone and I found a bug in a subvi (wrong calculus of Diff L in 'RDTSC Diff To Time.vi')

    Therefore, I pressed on "Add your comment" at the bottom of the page to signal it. The answer I received by email from NI was quite disappointing: "It appears that you are correct; however, since the "DIFF L" and DIFF H" indicators are not used downstream in the VI, it's somewhat of a moot point. The subtraction can easily be corrected by rewiring to obtain "DIFF L" from "2L" - "L". Again, since "DIFF L" is never used, this doesn't really even matter."
    Platforms: Win (All)
    Corrected Platforms: Mac, Unix (not applicable, uses CIN)
    Status: Not tested in LV 6.1

  3. Application Builder Crash "Kniskern, Roy" <KniskeLJ@litton-ps.com>
    I had Application Builder crash when building one of my Apps in 6.0.2 (It works fine in 6.0). Reported to and reproduced by NI. It occurs, apparently, when the "Do not compress target file option" is selected if the application uses NiDAQ vi's.
    Status: Not Tested LV6.1

  4. PID toolkit bad when proportional only control - Bruce Ammons <bruce@ammonsengineering.com>
    Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 11:54:27 -0400
    I have found a few bugs in the toolkit. They showed up when I tried to do proportional only control. I found that the integral portion (which should always be zero for Kp only) would get set to a constant offset. NI has been notified, but I don't know if they have done anything about it.

    The problem is most noticeable when you exceed your limits. Set the proportional gain to a large value, and use a setpoint with a large error. The limits will be exceeded and the integral constant is adjusted to stay within the limits. Now, if you set the setpoint equal to the error, the output should be zero, but it isn't. It is still equal to whatever was used to compensate for the limit. This value is stored in a shift register in the integral routine. I ended up modifying it to always use zero, except to correct for exceeded limits.

    NI response: "I spoke the the Research & Development Engineer that will be dealing with your request for a change to the PID toolkit vi's. He was aware that for some applications this behavior was not expected nor wanted, and feels that he can change the behavior for your. I do not have a time estimate at this time, but the corrective action request is CAR 29UG1MBQ"
    Platforms: WinNT, Win98, Win2K, Mac
    No example posted since PID toolkit is not public

  5. Crash when uncheck "Show Menubar" A hard LabVIEW crash with VI's that are set to ''Size the Front Panel to the Width and Height of the Entire Screen'' with ''Window has Title Bar'', ''Show menu Bar'', ''Show Scroll Bar'' and ''Show Toolbar When Running'' all unchecked. It happens when the cursor arrow is moved to the Macintosh menu bar area and when clicking on it....wham it goes and the system recommends a new start.

    Info from Bien Entendu <BienEntendu@mac.com>
    it just happens when you uncheck "show menubar" there is a conflict with the STF Fax software. so you have three options:

    1. don't use the fax software by disabling all the fax stf extensions in extension manager
    2. set show menubar to "on" and set a menu for every vi with a frontmost panel
    3. convince national to repair this bug or to correct the bug on "show menubar" which still shows a menubar when the option is unchecked(!) and by the way, ask them to remove this ridiculous and disgratious white bar on top of every VI(where the menubars are on the other platform)
    Example VI
    Platforms: Mac
    Status: Not checked in LV 6.1b
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