NI ENET-232/4 Blue Screen (BSOD) with Windows Vista 32-bit

[mrvandal]

I have a program running on Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit written in C# communicating with two serial devices using the NI ENET-232/4.  About once out of five times I run the program, Windows Vista will blue screens with a similar message as seen in the attachment to the first message in this thread "IRQL_GT_ZERO_AT_SYSTEM_SERVICE": 

http://forums.ni.com/t5/Instrument-Control-GPIB-Serial/NI-PCI-8430-8-Crashes-in-Vista-x64-with-a-BSO...

I am using NI-Serial 3.7 and have tried three different NI ENET-232/4 boxes (expensive way to troubleshoot...I know). Windows will blue screen with all three boxes while communicating with one or both serial devices. So it doesn't appear to be a faulty box.

I have tested communicating with each device on the PC's serial port.  Windows has never blue screened in this configuration.  It appears I have isolated the problem to the NI-Serial driver.  Has anyone had a similar problem with NI-Serial in Microsoft Vista?  Did NI fix the PCI-8430/8 problem from June of 2009 that was seen in the above thread?

Thanks for your help.

[Michelle_N]

Hi mrvandal,

We need some more information to help pinpoint the cause of this blue screen. Can you prefer a kernel dump for us?
 
This dump file may be very large- which case you may have to provide it to us using our ftp server.  (ftp://ftp.ni.com/incoming) Please let us know what the file name is so we can locate it.

Have you contacted NI Support regarding this issue? If so, please provide me your service request number so I can work with the Applications Engineer assigned to this issue.

As for the issue in the post you've linked - it doesn't appear the user ever posted his kernel dump so it is difficult to tell what was causing the blue screen in the first place. Also, it's very possible a newer version of NI-Serial would have resolved that particular issue.

[Sarah_Y]

Hi mrvandal,

Just to go over a few other troubleshooting steps, I have some follow up questions.  

1. Have you tried using this set up on another machine?  I don't know how complicated your set up is and if this is even an option but that would be valuable.

2. From what I am reading, you had this working correctly before.  When did you notice the change?  When you updated to NI-Serial 3.7?  What verions were you using before when it was working?

3. As mentioned in the DF that you linked in your post, can you generate a Kernal crash dump? (http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/581127525C80606A862570BE0003111D?OpenDocument)

4. I haven't seen any records showing a problem with NI-Serial in Vista, but I will keep looking.  There was a known issue with Vista 64 bit and version 3.3, but that was the most recent CAR filed for an issue like yours.

5. If you go through those troubleshooting steps and believe that you have found a bug, I would like to make an offical bug report.  To do this it has to be reproducable, so I will be needing your code, trimmed down to as little as possible to recreate this error.  We still have some work to do before it gets to that point, but I just want to make sure you are aware of the procedure.

Let me know how the troubleshooting goes and hopefully we can get to the bottom of this, or file a bug report if necessary.

[mrvandal]

Michelle & Sarah,

We have had the Vista blue screen with both NI-Serial 3.7 and NI-Serial 3.5.1.

Here are my responses to your troubleshooting questions:

1. Before we had the Vista configuration we performed our initial tests on a Windows XP machine.  I should note that the testing on XP was very limited.  We only started seeing this issue on the Windows Vista machine.  We should be able to retest on the Windows XP machine within the next week.

2. The serial communication works without a blue screen using the Vista PC's serial port.  We only run into blue screens when the NI ENET-232/4 is used.

3. We are working on generating a kernel dump, which should be forthcoming soon.

5. We have created a small console application which reproduces the problem.  We can send it on to you.

Thanks for your help!

[Sarah_Y]

mrvandal,

That console application will be great to have!  If it is too big to post here, Michelle mentioned her previous reply how to post things onto our ftp server.  Look forward to seeing that and the kernel dump.

[mrvandal]

Sarah,

We have uploaded a zip file, 1536036_ENET_232_Test.zip, containing the kernel dump and the console application to ftp://ftp.ni.com/incoming/.  The zip file contains a README file which describes how to run the application, EnetTester/EnetTester/bin/Debug/EnetTester.exe.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks!

[Scott_A]

Hi there,

I successfully got your folder and will be taking a look at it shortly.  Thank you for taking these debug steps so far!

[mrvandal]

Scott,

Thanks for the reply.  We also duplicated the blue screen on a Windows XP machine using the console application.  The blue screen occurred with both NI-Serial v3.5.1 and v3.7.  The ENET-232/4 box is running Ver A.1 of the firmware.   The blue screen error on Windows XP is IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

Thanks for the help.