Does MAX need to be installed for a built exe to utilize DAQ hardware?

[plyons.gks]

Hello-

I'm currently working on a program that gets built into an exe and put on a target computer running XPembedded.  Initially I installed MAX support and all the software I thought was necessary.  It seems to slow the computer down a good bit during boot up.  

Once the computer boots up, its almost as if XPe hangs for a good few minutes before you can even get the start menu up. I'm wondering if there is anyway I can uninstall MAX and use the "generate code" feature on all of the DAQ task names.

When I go to uninstall MAX the uninstaller tells me it will also remove all of the programs that have MAX as a dependancy (including my program).  

Does anyone have any insight on this issue?

Thanks for any info!

-pat

[smercurio_fc]

I don't think there's a way to pull MAX out. However, your problem doesn't sound like it's related to MAX, but rather to one of the hundreds of services that get installed. OK, so hundreds is an exagerration, but the silly number of service has been a complaint for a while. I'd suggest checking to see what services are starting up and turning them off. The likely culprits are the NI Domain Server and the NI Time Synchronization services. Although there's a few other ones in there that you probably don't need. Check the description of the service to determine if you need it, and search the NI site for some information on the service if you're not sure.

[plyons.gks]

Thanks for the reply and suggestions!

I'm currently uninstalling all the NI stuff I originally installed, I'm going to try and find some information about each of the services and have any unused services disabled using the XP Computer Management- since MSConfig is not in this particular XPe build.

There's a few other things in "additional installers" I think I might be able to opt out of.

Thanks again

-pat

[plyons.gks]

just as an update- as it turns out, I did not include the MAX config support installer this last time and my software and hardware currently seem to be working great.  I am now in the process of trying to slim down the services and startup activity to speed up boot time.

Right now my issue is as follows:

After putting my exe alias into the startup folder on the xpe target, it takes almost 5 minutes for the exe to load (including bootup)- AND my hardware does not work.  If I close the exe and re-run it, it seems to run fine.

So now perhaps theres an issue with the order of services/programs executed on startup.

If anyone has any insight or suggestions on how to go about this- I'd appreciate it.

I did manage to get msconfig running on the target as well, but it seems most of the NI services are dependent on one another and if you disable more than one or two, you kill communication between them and stuff like that.

thanks for any ideas

-pat

[Dan_N]

Hi Pat,

Based on the behavior that you're getting, it sounds to me like your application is trying to run before your DAQmx driver and associated processes have started. This will produce the behavior that you are seeing; your hardware won't work in your application when run at startup, but it will run when you run your application after startup because all of the necessary processes have loaded. This DevZone article from our website explains the process, and provides a VI you can run at the beginning of your application that functions as a query to determine when DAQmx has started running: http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/epd/p/id/6022

Best,

Dan N

Applications Engineer

National Instruments 

[plyons.gks]

Thanks dan!  

kudos to you sir.

-pat

[Dan_N]

You're welcome. Glad to help out!

-Dan