NI-Serial driver installation

[pspring]

NI PCI-8432 (RS-485) does not install correctly. I followed the directions by first installing the software, NI-Serial, then shutting down the PC and installing the hardware. Windows XP is showing a dialog box reading "Cannot install hardware. The system cannot find the file specified."

After clicking the Finish button there is a short delay and then the dialog box appears again about the second port on the hardware. This is continuous. There is no indication of what file is missing or a way to browse the installation disk to find the file.

The troubleshooting wizard does not detect the hardware. Windows Device manager shows the hardware but says there is a problem with it. if I try to update the driver a message says that it's not possible right now because it's in the process of being uninstalled.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[JoshuaP]

What version of NI-Serial are you using? Are you currently logged in as the systems administrator and were you logged on as the admin when you installed the driver.

-Josh

Message Edited by JoshuaP on 01-15-2006 10:08 PM

[pspring]

NI Serial rev 1.8. Yes I am the admin.

[pspring]

I ordered 2 of these PCI 485 cards and the second was installed in a system running Windows 2000 with no problems. These cards work SO much better than a serial port with 485 converter hanging on it. 🙂

I suspect that niserial.sys in the Windows\System32\drivers directory is whack. 😉  I backed up the file then copied one directly from the installation CD, it was of different size, which ended up with a different error message and the reoccuring "New Hardware Found" dialog box stopped popping up after it's first attempt. I've also tried copying the file from the other computer but that did not work either.

[JoshuaP]

Since the NI-Serial 1.8 driver is signed, you probably don't want to manually copy the files, because that will break the signing process. However, if the files were different sizes you are right that something had probably gone wrong. Try this:

1. Shutdown the computer and remove any of the ni serial boards.

2. Reboot and open MAX, and run the Tools/NI-Serial/Recover Unused COM Numbers. This should remove any dependancies on the inf and dll.

3. Now run the NI-Serial Uninstaller to completely remove the driver.

4. Afterwards check to see that the dll was removed and possibly manually remove it.

5. Now use the windows search to search the c:\Windows\inf folder for any file containing the text VEN_1093&DEV_70DB, this is the first entry in the PCI Serial INF file which will have some kind of OEMxy.INF name. It should have been removed, but if not manually delete it and it's associated OEMxy.PNF file.

6. If the C:\Program Files\National Instruments\NI-Serial folder still exists delete it as well.

7. Now your system should be in a clean state. Run the NI-Serial installer. After the installer has finished, shut down your machine, insert the hardware and reboot your computer. You should only get a small pop-up in your lower right hand corner saying the hardware is ready to be used. Depending on how fast your machine is it may take a minute or two for it to detect the new hardware. You should then be able to open MAX or the Windows Device Manager to see the new hardware.

I sure hope this helps out.

-Josh

[JoshuaP]

In the future I would suggest ordering the PCI-8431. They are the same price and are much faster and rugged, their only downside is that the 843x boards are not supported on Windows 98 or NT.

-Josh

[pspring]

The hardware was working all along even though the software did not seem to be installing correctly. I found this out by ignoring the error message, wiring the hardware for loopback testing, then running hyperterminal.

I did as Joshua described but that did not change anything. I talked to NI tech support and they had me run NI Blast to uninstall all registery entries thinking that part of it was corrupt. (One weird thing I noticed while unistalling NI stuff was that in the Add/Remove Programs list just below NI software was a huge blank entry that took up a cupple hundered rows of text space. The blank entry went away after uninstall all NI stuff).  I then installed just NI Serial then the hardware. Still got the errors.

In then end I just left the error message window up and started using the hardware. For unknown reason(s) the error message no longer appears. This happened after reboots for other reasons. The only difference in one of the reboots was that I had the LAN network connection disabled because I had just finished using dialup to play a little Wulfram(Look it up if you like. :{} ) and I disable the LAN during that time. There is normally an unexplained delay of 1 minute after I type in my user name and password and hit the login button to the time that the PC "wakes up" and shows the desktop but with the LAN disabled there was no delay(under Control Panel, Network Connections). This is when the error would begin to appear also. I'm sure Josua "The Brain" P can explain this. 🙂  Thanks for the efforts of all repliers!!!