How to Progrmatically reinitialize a PXI bus

[Joe_H]

Our application is to develop a functional test fixture for one of our production boards that is usually installed in the NI PXI-1042 chassis with the PXI-8196 embedded controller running XP pro.

We are using  a Chroma ATE 52906 extender card to test our UUT so we can access the board during test. The 52906 extender card allows us to turn off power to the UUT, replace the UUT, then turn power back on without rebooting the host computer(PXI-8196 ) which saves us considerable test time.

We use the following process to change UUT's

1. Go into Device Manager, look under Other Devices and select the UUT (shows up as: PCX Custom (OEM) PCI 9656 Board), then select Action --> Uninstall.

2. Turn off the 52906 extender card and replace the UUT.

3. Turn on the 52906 extender card and wait for the UUT to boot up.

4. Go into Device Manager, select the computer icon at the top of the device tree, then select Action --> Scan for Hardware Changes.

5. The Found New Hardware Wizard will open. Follow the steps and allow the wizard to automatically search for and install the driver.

6. The UUT is ready for test.

My goal is to accomplish steps 1, 4 and 5 programatically using LabVIEW.

Any Ideas

Thanks,

[Ryan_F]

Hello,

National Instruments does not recommend programmatically disabling the PCI bus. However, if this is something you need to do, it might be possible to code this in a text based language and create a .dll that can be called from LabVIEW.

Thank you

[Joe_H]

We are not disabling the bus, we are just wanting to do a scan for new hardware so that it will Re-initialize the bus so that we can talk to our board. We use the generic windows driver for communication and it does not recognize that it has new hardware until we tell windows to scan for new hardware. Does anyone know of a dll or windows API that will do this.

Thanks,

[Ryan_F]

Hello,

I'm sorry for the confusion. I found a site with something similiar to what you are trying to do. It might be a good place to start. It is located at:

http://www.thecodecave.com/article312. It deals with automating the process of detecting new hardware.

Thank you,

[SteveSmith]

Hi Ryan,

I'm working with Joe on this. I don't want to disable the PCI bus but before I can change the UUT, I do need to uninstall the UUT from the bus, then do a hardware scan to pick up the new UUT (same type of board, same slot, etc.), and then somehow get through the driver load process without invoking the Found New Hardware Wizard.

Using a dll would be fine.

Thanks for the Codecave link - we'll see were that leads.

In the meantime, any additional information will be appreciated.

Steve S.

[Omar_II]

Down load DEVCON.EXE from MicroSoft.

It allows you to do what you can do in Device Manager programmability

Omar