Windows Xp unstable

[MrQuestion]

Howdy,

How does one start troubleshooting an unstable Windows XP. When I do a fresh install everything works fine until I install LabVIEW along with the necessary drivers, and run the automated test.

When I say unstable I'm referring the behavior of windows as a whole. Programs are slow to respond such as word, and internet explorer, even notepad, and sometimes LabVIEW will just exit without any warning.

I have been reading about windows instability and some blogs along with the MSDN website suggest watching the number of "handles" along with "USER Objects" and "GDI Objects" from the windows task manager.

Some blogs suggest that a machine may experience instability past 15,000 Handles, while some resources suggest that memory usage or memory swapping is the largest culprits to an unstable machine.

In any case I need assistance in troubleshooting what is causing my test machines to become unstable. When I open up NIMax after a fresh reboot it can open up more than 21,000 handles just by itself, and this doesn't seem normal. We are running a PXI over MXI, and we do have several serial cards installed, but 21,000 handles seems excessive. 

I suspect that we might have some type of driver conflict where one driver doesn't work very well simultaneously with another driver.

I am running LabVIEW 2009 SP1

VISA Implementation 4.6.2, Version 4.0  (from the about on the VISA panel)

NIMAX 4.6.2f1 (from the about menu)

NI-488.2 Version 2.7.2

NI-Serial 3.5.1

NI-DAQ 8.9.5

Test Stand 3.5

I might mention that I don’t even need to be running the test software for the system to be unstable. After a fresh reinstall of windows the system doesn’t start misbehaving until after I install LabVIEW along with the device drivers.

Any assistance in diagnosing this will be much appreciated.

Regards,

[aeastet]

Can you give specifics for your hardware and software:

Windows version and service pack:

Computer type:

CPU # and speed:

RAM Memory available:

Free Hard Drive Space:

LabVIEW Version:

MAX Driver Version:

Is there anything other thatn the PXI system Installed or connected to your computer?

Did you modify the example VI that you are running?

[MrQuestion]

I have an Intel Core2 Duo at 2.8Ghz with 2Gb Ram, and i'm not using more than 10% of my hard drive space with several 100Gb.

LabVIEW 2009 SP1 Version 9.0.1

Windows XP SP3

MAX Version is 4.6.2f1

I do have several PCI cards installed locally that are used for RS485 and 1553.

[aeastet]

I think I would try and start thing one at a time and see when Windows starts having problems. Start Labview on example program running. Look to see what is happening with memory. If good open the sample program and look again.

[Norbert_B]

There can be different reasons for unstable systemperformance.

What you should do:

1. Update your system to the most current version including hot fixes.

2. Check for Viruses. Lately, many computers are running with malware making them part of "bot-networks" which will reduce the system performance.

3. Check for Malware for instance by using Adaware.

4. Switch of unnecessary services.

There could be a hardware incompatibility which will lead to crashes or defective RAM is also a valid guess.,...

hope this helps,

Norbert

[MrQuestion]

The PC has daily virus scans and our network is closely monitored. There are a number of background services running, but I doubt that they are the culprate since we have many other test machines that do not have issues running the same services.

I have completely uninstalled LabVIEW along with all device drivers and NI related products. The computer becomes stable again. I install LabVIEW and I don't seem to have any issues, but once I start installing device drivers and working with MAX the system becomes unstable.

We have several other test machines that run without issue. The difference on this test station is that we are running the latest drivers from the NI website and LabVIEW 2009. I don't want to just randomly start pulling back drivers and hope that I solve an issue.

Is there a listing somewhere of what drivers and versions play nice with other drivers. Or a ranking of stability, or known issues.

I'm not ruling out hardware incompatibility. Another thing worth mentioning is that I'm using a QPCX-1553 card from GE.

I doubt RAM would be an issue since we have the same symptoms on several other test stations.

-thanks for the reply

[MrQuestion]

*****UPDATE*****

Playing around with this issue I had one of my technicians tell me that his PC (on the other side of the lab) just became very unstable. It happened just when I was launching a large project on my machine. He has been using the PC all morning without any issues untill i opened my project on a totally different machine.

I restart my machine, his machine is stable, i launch my project, his machine becomes unstable.

So this tells me that there is some network resources causing issues.

We are working out of subversion (TortoiseSVN client) and our projects are being launch locally on the host PC. After reading in some other forums I find out that LabVIEW writes to the "my documents" directory.  With our common login the "my documents" is stored at the same network location. This is part of our login into the domain, and can not be changed (easily). 

So, what do I do? I think I found the issue. Because I can have as many as 15 different PC's running a labview project all trying to store data to the "my documents" location that is being shared.  I've been doing trend analysis and it appears to be linked to the number of users using the same login and sharing the my documents.

I don't want LabVIEW to be writing anything to this directory.

[RavensFan]

Under Tools > Options then under paths, there is a temporary directory file and Default Data directory path to c:\users\myusername\temp.  Maybe for you its using a network path.  You can try unchecking the use default path and pick a file path local to that machine.

If that doesn't work, get your IT guys to fix your network and logins so that it doesn't save what should be local files to a network drive.