Visa Resource Name Hangs

[shaiqbashir]

HI guys!

I was using Labview 8.1 initially. Then i installed Labview 8.2 20th Anniversary edition. Im facing two major problems here.

1) Whenever i use Serial communications and i press on the drop down button of my Visa Resource Name control in order to select the appropriate COM port, the system gets hangs and i have to shutoff my Labview through ctrl+alt+del. Due to this problem , im just unable to select the right COM port for my program. I dint face this problem in 8.1

2) When i right click on any control lets say KNOB and click on its properties. It starts searching something in different folders of my Labview Installation and after taking quite some time, it displays its properties. I dont know why is it doing so? Again this wasnt the problem when i was using 8.1 version of Labview.

i would like to bring into the knowledge of you people that 8.1 is still installed on my pc. I dint reinstall it. I just install 8.2, i thought it will upgrade it but the National instruments entry in the "add remove programs" of control panel shows that 8.1 is still there along with 8.2.  So is this causing all these problems?

Kindly help me as soon as possible!

Thanks in advance!

[Can_W]

Hey Shaiqbashir,
On the first issue, it seems that there is a driver issue with NI-VISA. My first question is what version of NI-VISA did you install after upgrading to LV 8.2.  Here is the location of the drivers, try installing one of these and seeing if that same error happens.
The second half seems to be an issue with the upgrade. Could you let me know if this happens when you create a control on a new blank vi and select properties. It could be that the path that it is looking under is not correct and that's why it takes some extra time to do this. This KnowledgeBase describes how you can change where to look, default wise.

[Crowbar]

Hello. I have the same problem. LV version is 8.2.1, VIsa is 4.3. When I press Visa Resource Name selector LV hangs the system. I'm using USB<->RS232 converter, but the described problem also happens when the converter isn't plugged in. I have also shutted down searching for GPIB, but this didn't solve a problem. Is there any ways to fix a problem?

Regards, Konstantin.

[Can_W]

Hey Konstantin,
Just as a side note, it's usually best to start a new thread when you have a question. Most times than not, older DFs are ignored by the previous posters.
On the note of the issue at hand, it seems that there might be something wrong with your driver. We can test this out by going into Measurement & Automation Explorer(MAX), assuming that you are using a Windows OS. If you experience the same problem when trying to select/communicate with the USB<->232 converter there, than VISA is the culprit, this could have occured when instaling the driver, and usually a repair/reinstall will fix the problem. If you cannot do anything in MAX, then you may have a database corruption error, which could be fixed by following the instructions on the KB How Do I Recover from MAX Database Corruption. If neither of this happens, than it could be that there is a bad link between LV and the resources. With this, I would drag the resource that you wish to use into labVIEW from MAX. Then this should resolve the issue.
Hopefully this helps you out, let me know if the problem still persists

Can W

[russellb]

I am having the same problem as in this post and I am using LV 8.5 and NI VISA 4.3. I tried repairing VISA, but I still get the same issue with LV hanging while searching for visa resource names.  I can see the ports in MAX just fine. This problem didn' occur until after I installed the driver for the FTDI FT2232D.  The workaround in the post will not work since I want to use Find VISA Resources and that VI also hangs in LV.  Any help you could provide would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Russell

[Can_W]

Hi Russell,
Just putting this out there in case anyone had the same question. There isn't any known compatibility issues with the FTDI  FT2232D, and there have even been cases where people have gotten things to work. The issue seems it might have just been a bad installation of the FTDI driver, in which a repair/reinstall would resolve the issue. FTDI may have more information about this too, but I haven't checked

Can W

[russellb]

Hello Can,

I contacted FTDI about this issue too and they said other had successfully used LV with the FT2232D so I am assuming a bad installation as well.  For the end application installer I will probably run the FT Clean and executable version of the FT2232D driver as an additional installer to avoid this issue on future installations. 

I wanted to outline the steps I had to do so that the VISA resource name automatically detects the com ports in LV and doesn't hang LV, because it might be helpful to others:

1. If the FT2232D device is installed then go to Device Manager and under Ports (COM & LPT) uninstall both USB serial ports.  

2. Unplug FT2232D device (USB serial converter)

3. Run FTClean:

http://www.ftdichip.com/Resources/Utilities/FTClean.zip

4. Open LV and put down a VISA Resource control..

5. Press the down arrow on control and the VISA Resource names on the computer should be found automatically (note this action previously caused LV to hang)

6. Download the driver and unzip it on your local drive:

http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/CDM/CDM%202.04.06%20WHQL%20Certified.zip

7. Plug in the FT2232D device

8. The found new hardware wizard will appear for each port on the FT2232D. Tell the wizard to search in the folder you just unzipped.

9. Then go back to your VI and press refresh on the VISA resource control and the virtual com ports for the FT2232D will be detected.

I hope this helps anyone that might run across this problem in the future.