Error 5 When Installing NI Software and IVI Drivers

Updated Jan 10, 2019

Issue Details

I am trying to install National Instruments software in my computer, but when I execute the installer, I get Unable to execute file in the temporary directory. Error 5: Access is Denied, saying that the Setup was Unsuccessful.
 

 
I downloaded an IVI driver from the 3rd Party Instrument Drivers page. After the WinZip Self-Extractor finishes extracting the installation files, I receive an error dialog with the following message: Error 5 running command .\setup.exe; the dialog is shown below:
 

Solution

Some installers come in the form of self-extracting executables (.exe) files, and others as compressed folders (.zip).

 

  1. Make sure you have downloaded the software directly from the National Instruments Website.
  2. Use an administrator account to install the software.
  3. Extract the software:
    1. If the software is a self-extracting executable (.exe): Run the installer .exe as administrator. Right click in the file and select Run as Administrator.
    2. If the software is a compressed folders (.zip), unzip your file using administrator privileges.
  4. If you find problems with the file extraction, try changing the directory where you are extracting the files to a location that has read and write permissions.
  5. Make sure there are no anti-virus programs blocking the execution of installers in your machine.
  6. Navigate to the directory in which setup.exe was extracted. For IVI drivers and self-extracting executables (.exe), the WinZip Self-Extractor extracts files to c:\<National Instruments Downloads>\IVI
  7. Once you locate the setup.exe file associated with your IVI driver, run setup.exe as an administrator, and you should not receive the error message.
  8. If you do not have administrator privileges, please contact your IT department for further information on obtaining these privileges and installing software.

Additional Information

This message appears because the file for your software or IVI driver cannot obtain permission to open. It comes from the Windows Operating System, which restricts access to certain directories and applications. You can read more about it here: External Link: “Error 5: Access is denied” software installation error in Windows