Adding NI-VirtualBench Support in Older LabVIEW™ Versions

Issue Details

I am trying to open a VI created with a previous version of LabVIEW that contains NI-VirtualBench elements. LabVIEW prompts me to manually locate the VirtualBench subVIs each time I open the VI. In some cases, certain options appear greyed out, and the VI shows a broken run arrow. How can I resolve this issue and run the VI correctly? 

Solution

The last version of the NI-VirtualBench driver is 19.0, which supports LabVIEW 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.

If your LabVIEW and driver versions are mismatched, the NI-VirtualBench driver will not support the newer LabVIEW version, which causes missing subVIs, disabled palette items, or broken VIs.

You can apply the following workaround to manually make the VirtualBench VIs available in a newer LabVIEW version. However, this approach is not officially supported and may not work in all cases.

For example, to use VirtualBench 18.0 VIs in LabVIEW 2019:

1. Download the NI-VirtualBench software.
2. Install or re-install NI-VirtualBench 18.0 using a custom installation.
3. Select LabVIEW 2018 Support during installation.
4. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\LabVIEW 2018\vi.lib\, or the corresponding folder of your installation.
5. Copy the VirtualBench folder into C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\LabVIEW 2019\vi.lib\
6. Restart LabVIEW 2019.

Note: This workaround applies only to the base LabVIEW version and not to SP1 versions.

Additional Information

When using a supported combination of NI-VirtualBench and LabVIEW, these steps are not required. For example:

• NI-VirtualBench 16.x supports LabVIEW 2016
• NI-VirtualBench 17.x supports LabVIEW 2017
• NI-VirtualBench 18.x supports LabVIEW 2018