Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm using DAQmx, not DAQmx Base. Actually, a LAVA member pointed me in the right direction: the builder creates the wrong path in the application's .ini file - my NI-DAQmx.ApplicationStorageFile was set to "applicationfolder\nidaqmx.ini", where it should have been just ".\nidaqmx.ini" - looks like a bug to me!