When querying an RS-232 laser I am receiving unreliable results

[NIDave]

I have a laser that I query for its ID and temperatures. The laser responds fine using hyper-terminal however with Labview I often get blank return strings or Error -1073807298. The software becomes more, but not entirely, relaible when using the trace feature leading me to believe there is a timing issue within my sequences. Any suggestions with this communication issue would be helpful.

[BugBuster]

What VI is returning this error?
If it's VISA Read, how much time are you allowing for your host to recieve a reply from the laser device?
To make my point directly, I attached the receive routine I use with no problems.

[NIDave]

The error was coming from the VISA Read vi. The awkward thing that I noticed is that the property node I use to find the number of bytes at the port changes to a lower value before the error occurs which leads me to believe the error is coming from a timing issue with my VISA write. The lower value is from the nearly blank strings (it contains the prompt which is 18 bytes but no data) that are being sent back from the laser controller board.

BugBuster, I tried the VI submitted above (thank you) which was nearly identical to mine except for the wait function and it seemed to eliminate the "error -1073807298" when I increased the wait time as high as 5 seconds. The reliability of the data on the other hand never increased.

Any other suggestions
would be helpful.
thanks,
Dave