Registry access required for tsverselect on startup?

[dseel]

Hi:

We have built an automated teststand 4.0 distribution for all of our production test stations. On the majority of stations, the installer works fine. However, on some stations, we get an error when starting the teststand engine. The error popup references tsverselect.exe. By default, our users do not have access to the registry, though the installer does grant access to the Program Files\National Instruments directory. If we change the user to a power user, the error goes away.

Thoughts on what the problem could be?

I have tried uninstalling all NI software and then reinstalling just Teststand 4 distribution and the error still occurs. I have also verified that the correct teststand version is selected (when logged in as an admin). Why would this happen on some stations but not others? This week the installer was run on 4 PCs that are (in theory) identical. The error occurs on 2 of the 4 stations.

Thanks,
Dave

[RayFarmer]

Hi,

Are all the systems using the same OS and at the same build?

Regards

Ray Farmer

[herosphro]

Dave,

This problem has been encountered in the past when the Windows user account that is launching TestStand is not an Administrator on the computer.  If this is the case one possible solution is to login as an Administrator, run TSVerSelect.exe explicitly and select TestStand 4.0.  From that point forward the non-Administrator accounts should be able to launch TestStand without running into this problem.

[dseel]

Hi:

We have tried this in the past and it has not worked. We tried it again today on the most recent problem stations and confirmed it still does not work.

Four stations with identical OS and build were upgraded this week. 2 worked, 2 had this problem.

Cheers,
Dave

[dug9000]

Have you tried running teststand at least once from the admin account?

-Doug

[herosphro]

Hello Dave,

I noticed you havent posted again, so I wanted to check and see if Doug's suggestion was helpful or if you are still seeing the problem? Please let me know as so we can continue to work on this problem if it still exists.

[dseel]

Hi:

Sorry for the slow reply - I was on vacation last week.

We tried a couple things:
1. Gave the user administrator rights and confirmed were able to run with no error.
2. Removed adminstrator rights from user and confirmed the runtime error was back.
3. Ran under the local adminsitrator account with no error,  then ran from the user account and still had the error.

So running once as admin seems to have no effect. See attached for the error popups.

Thanks,
Dave

[herosphro]

Dave,

I have talked to our R&D department and we are trying to discern what could be causing this error.  Since you can run the Operator Interface as an Administrator then it means that TestStand has registered itself on the system.  Therefore we should not get any errors in TSVerSelect.exe.  Also since the screenshots you sent seem to indicate you get to the point in your OI that it launches the Login dialog then we are again past the point where the TestStand Engine is instantiated so we shouldn't see errors with this file.  Therefore we are somewhat puzzled as to why we see an error with this file.

One helpful test you could run is to copy the Full Featured C++ UI, that ships with TestStand, onto one of the non-working PCs and see if it replicates this problem behavior.  This will ensure that the behavior is not tied to your custom OI.  Also to confirm, what is the full version number (with patches) of the TestStand installation that you are using?  Thanks in advance for this information.  We will keep you posted on what we find.

[dseel]

Hi:

We tried using the Full Featured C++ UI that ships with TestStand and got the same result. See attached screenshot.

We are using version 4.0.0.326 of Teststand. No patches installed.

Cheers,
Dave

[herosphro]

Dave,

Would it be possible to update to TestStand 4.0.1f1?  The patch can be obtained here.  The reason we suggest this is that there are some known issues with .NET Framework 2.0 and TestStand UI objects and they might be manifesting themselves in an unexpected way with this error.  Please let me know if it is possible to update and try this version on one of these problem machines.