Measurement & Automation Explorer incompatible with Microsoft Office Communicator 2005?

[PetersonMarkJ]

Just installed NI-GPIB v2.5 and NI-VISA 4.1 on my system which has Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 (v1.0.559).  When I try to communicate with my instruments (by clicking on the "Communicate with Instrument" button), I get an error message of:

Microsoft Office Communicator

The specified address is not recognized or does not exist.  Please verify the address and try again.  If you do not know the correct address, contact your system administrator.

This seems to be caused by the NI application mistakenly trying to call up MS Office Communicator, but I can't see anywhere to modify either applications settings to get these "unhooked".

Has anyone else had this problem, and/or have any suggestions for mitigating?

[Ebele_Obijiofor]

Hello,

I certainly haven't seen this problem before. Out of curiousity, if instead of clicking the "communicate with instrument" button (which uses the NI-488.2 drier directly), you click on "Open VISA Test Panel", do you still get this error? I am assuming you already had the Microsoft Office Communicator installed before you installed the NI software. If you uninstall and reinstall the communicator, do you still see the problem? I am trying to see if the order of installation will change anything. I hope this helps, and let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!

Regards,

Message Edited by _Belle on 06-06-2007 11:43 AM

[PetersonMarkJ]

Ebele,

I should have mentioned that before.  I am able to communicate with the instruments through the VISA test panel as you suggest with no problems, so there isn't a problem with the drivers themselves.  The problem is only with the Measurement & Automation tool's access.  Unfortunately, I don't have the ability to uninstall/reinstall the Communicator product, as this is an IT controlled machine, and that particular operation would require "Congressional approval" ;-).  Thanks for your comments, and I'd be interested in any additional information you may have on the subject.

Mark

[John E]

Hi Mark,
I would recommend contacting NI support about this issue at http://www.ni.com/contact/ then clicking on the Request Support link (or just click on my direct link to Request support)


Regards,

[ds_1]

hi,
       I'm having similar problems with a recently installed LabView 8.2, when I click "communicate with instrument" in MAX it opens ms communicator 2005, which is not exactly the type of communication I had in mind 
Was just wondering is there a quick fix?

 Thanks!!

[Ted_H]

Hi ds_1,

This is a known issue with NI-488.2 communicator and Microsoft Communicator, a corrective action request has been filed for it and a solution is being developed.  In the meantime, there are  work arounds available.

The first solution is to call the NI-488.2 Communicator directly from the Microsoft Command Prompt.  To do this, go to Start>>Run, enter cmd and click ok.  In the command prompt, change the directory to C:\Program Files\National Instruments\NI-488.2\Bin.  Once in this directory, type Communicator.exe <GPIB Interface ID> 0 <Primary Address> 0 and press enter.  This will load the NI-488.2 Communicator.  the GPIB interface ID and Primary address are system specific and can be found in MAX under devices and interfaces>>GPIB.  I have included a screen shot for the location of the GPIB interface ID and Primary address as well as for the command prompts.

Alternatively, you can access the functionality of the NI-488.2 communicator with VISA Interactive Control.  From MAX, go to Tools>>VISA>>VISA Interactive Control.  In the VISA Interactive Control, select the VISA I/O tab and expand the GPIB tree, double click your device.  This will open a VISA session to your device and will allow you to write and read from your device.

I hope this information helps.

Ted

[ds_1]

Thanks  for response.
Checked out these suggestions and they work fine. Thought I'd made a mess when installing!!

[PetersonMarkJ]

Let me add my thanks to John E and Ted H for digging into this problem.  I thought I was alone in this, but it's good to see that NI's on top of it.  Looking forward to the final solution, but the workarounds are much appreciated for now.

-Mark

[Tim_at_RC]

I guess we are still waiting for a real fix from NI.

In the meantime we have started having the same problem, so I have renamed the offending file to MSCommunicator.exe and made registry edits to match.  This allows the new MSCommunicator to launch from a desktop shortcut.  Now both run without conflict.

The only issue I have left is my company log on script looks for \Microsoft Office Communicator\communicator.exe and does not find it, so it loads the old messenger application.  I just close it and launch the desktop shortcut to get that application active on the system tray.

[ds_1]

Thanks for info Tim,

                  Although its been over a year since this issue has raised its head. No NI fix, I'd be disapointed to have to go modify the registry entries of the non offending application. I guess we will have to educate on this issue ourselves here as we upgrade in the coming weeks. Time consuming for us.