Labview 2012 silent installation and activation

This will be a short blog post that covers installing and activating LabView 2012 silently. This was quite the task because LabView silent activation is a nightmare to deal with.

Notes:

• This guide will cover installing the 64 bit version of Labview 2012 service pack 1.
• You will need to have valid licenses from National Instruments. I using a volume license (not on a server). I cannot confirm if this will work without a volume license.
• To activate silently, you will need to know the “family” name of your Labview product. Labview does not publish the “family” names of its products, or at least I haven’t found any information on their website. There is a way to find out your family name from the temporary license file, which I will cover at the end of the post.

Prerequisites:

• Please obtain Labview 2012 with Service pack 1, which can be found in NI Downloads.
• Please obtain Labview 2012 SP1 “f2” patch, which can be found in NI Downloads.

Organize your installation files

1. First run the two executable files that you downloaded from NI. These will download some archives from NI for you.
2. Unzip the Labview 2012 SP1 files into a folder called “Labview 2012”.
3. Make a folder called “patch f2” inside your “Labview 2012” directory. Your “Labview 2012” directory should look like this.
   

Setup your batch file

Labview’s installer is very similar to an msi. Many msi commands can be used on Labview’s installer.

1. First make a batch file called “install_labview.cmd” and place this in your “Labview 2012” folder.
2. Edit the batch file and add the following lines. Basically this will install Labview 2012 SP1 silently.

REM Install labview 2012 silent
setup.exe /qn /AcceptLicenses yes /r:n

REM Install Patch
".\patch f2\setup.exe" /qn /AcceptLicenses yes

REM Post-install Licensing
"C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\Shared\License Manager\Bin\nilmUtil.exe" -family "LabVIEW_ADE_120001" -serialnumber "X##X#####" -firstname "Department Of Chemistry" -lastname "chemistry" -organizationname "The Ohio State University" -s

• Note: “/AcceptLicenses” is for Microsoft Silverlight and other third party software. This is not dealing with Labview licensing.

Labview Licensing

Labview uses an application called “nilmUtil.exe”(included) to license its products. More information on this can be found in the Automating Activation section of NI website. To use nilmUtil.exe for silent licensing, you need to include 5 pieces of information. Modify your batch file licensing section with the following information.

• The family name of the Labview product
• serial number (you get from NI)
• first and last name
• organization name
• silent switch

Troubleshooting licensing problems

After the installation, if Labview states that its in “Evaluation mode”, then the silent activation failed.This is most likely due to the “family” name being wrong in some way.Below you can see that the naming conventions for the “family name” are very product/update specific:

• “Labview 2012” uses the famiy name  “LabVIEW_ADE_120000”
• “Labview 2012 with SP1” uses the family name “LabVIEW_ADE_120001”

If you are having trouble with finding your family name, please look at the next section or contact NI support.

Determining your Labview product family name.

Note: I have only tested this technique on Labview 2012. I cannot guarantee that this will work for all Labview products.

1. To determine your family name, you must do a manual installation of your Labview software.
2. After the manual installation is finished, we can look at the temporary license file that has been given to your system.
3. Navigate to “C:\ProgramData\National Instruments\License Manager\Licenses” and you should see a file(s) that are named something like “Labview_PDS_PKG_120001.lc”.
4. Open the license file in notepad and you should see something that looks like this.
   SERVER
THIS_HOST ANY 27000 VENDOR nilm PACKAGE LabVIEW_FDS_PKG nilm 12.0001 COMPONENTS="LabVIEW_Core \ LabVIEW_Base LabVIEW_Full LabVIEW_FDS LabVIEW_Math:8.0601 \ LabVIEW_LabVIEW:7.0100 NIDAQ_DAQAssistant:7.0000" \ SIGN=72AB456ACG12C
INCREMENT LabVIEW_FDS_PKG nilm 12.0001 1-jan-1900 uncounted \ HOSTID=DEMO vendor_info="VERSION_STRING=2012 SP1 VISIBLETO64 \ FAMILY=LabVIEW_ADE_120001 TYPE=Application LABEL=Full \ Development System \ URL=http://digital.ni.com/express.nsf/bycode/exdbbz" TS_OK \ SIGN=8DSLA13233DA
5. Looking through the license file, you should find a option called “Family= LabVIEW_blah_blah”. This is the family name of the product you are trying to license. Insert this family name into the licensing section “family” switch in our batch file. Rerun the installation and your product should activate silently.
6. IF this section did not help you, please contact NI support. I can help no further.