Installing NI-DAQ 7.5 driver causes error "nidaq32.dll not found" error in old VB6 code

[ChrisErven]

Hi,

Anyone had this problem? I installed the NI-DAQ 7.5 drivers because I've been trying to get an application working with my 6533 card which just had DAQmx support added for it in 7.5. I have old code in VB6 that makes straight driver calls that I was trying to migrate to VB.NET. So I installed the new drivers and now I can access the card fine in VB.NET, however, my old VB6 application no longer works. It gives me the following error:
Run-time error' '48':
File not found: nidaq32.dll
I went searching and the nidaq32.dll is still sitting in my Windows/SYSTEM32 folder, so that should be fine. The only thing I've changed since it stopped working is the installation of NI-DAQ7.5. I've tried reinstalling the driver. I've also tried overwriting the three nidaq32.bas files that I had in my project directory with the new ones in the nidaq/includes folder. Anyone else have this happen and/or know a solution for it?

Thanks,
Chris

[Marni]

Dear Chris,

When you make calls to nidaq32.dll, you are making calls to the Traditional (Legacy) DAQ driver. NI-DAQmx 7.5 is a different driver, with different function calls. If you want to make calls to the DAQmx driver, you can call nicaiu.dll. The functions are going to be a lot different than the Traditional (Legacy) DAQ calls. These functions can be found in the NI-DAQmx C Reference Help. (Start Menu>>All Programs>>National Instruments>>NI-DAQ)

There is a VB.NET API built into LabVIEW that is much easier to use. There are examples that come with the NI-DAQmx driver that show how to use the driver. (C:\Program Files\National Instruments\MeasurementStudioVS2003\DotNET\Examples\DAQmx) Even though they are in the Measurement Studio folder, you don't need to have Measurement Studio installed. To get these examples you have to go into the installer and add support for .NET. (Control Panel>>Add Remove Programs. National Instruments>>NI-DAQmx 7.5) Have a great day!

Sincerely,

Marni S.

[Hexar]

Hi Chris,

Just a clarification, the VB.NET API is not built into LabVIEW, but is included with DAQmx 7.5.  By default the .NET DAQmx API and examples are not installed when you install DAQmx unless you have Measurement Studio installed, but like Marni said, you do not need to have Measurement Studio in order to use the .NET DAQmx support.  Sounds like you already have DAQmx 7.5 installed, so you have to use the Add or Remove Programs tool to add support for .NET.  Find the entry for "National Instruments Software" and then click on the Change button.  Click on NI-DAQmx 7.5 and then click on the Modify button.  When you get to the Features dialog, expand the NI-DAQmx 7.5 node and left-click on ".NET Framework 1.1 Languages Support" and select "Install this feature to a local drive".  Continue with the rest of the installer dialogs and you will now have .NET support installed on your machine.  Hope this information helps.

Hexar Anderson
Measurement Studio Software Engineer
National Instruments

[ChrisErven]

Hi there,

Thanks for replying to me. You've misunderstood my question a bit. I have VB6 code that I'd like to migrate to .NET, however, I'd like to keep the VB6 code working as well. So I've installed the DAQmx7.5 so that I can access my 6533 card with DAQmx class library calls in .NET just as you've both said. So that's fine, however, my old VB6 code no longer runs and gives me the error nidaq32.dll not found when it tries to call the first traditional DAQ driver function. I talked to someone at NI, they said they'd heard of the problem and I needed to install the newer traditional DAQ 7.4 Legacy drivers. so I did that. Didn't help. I uninstalled everything, reinstalled labview, and DAQ 7.3, the VB6 program worked again. I installed the traditional DAQ 7.4 legacy drivers, VB6 app still works. Then I installed DAQmx7.5 and the VB6 no longer works, instead it gives me that error. While I am migrating the code, I'd still like the VB6 code to work, just in case I need to use it. I would think DAQ would want to be backwards compatible, but it appears the new DAQmx driver is not very traditional DAQ friendly. Any ideas?

Chris

[Hexar]

Chris,

Traditional DAQ was not included in the installer for DAQmx 7.5.  If you purchased a DAQ board during the 7.5 timeframe, then you should have received a Traditional NI-DAQ 7.4 CD along with your DAQmx 7.5 CD.  You will need to install both DAQmx 7.5 and Traditional NI-DAQ 7.4 if you need to do concurrent development.  It sounds like you installed 7.4, uninstalled it, and then installed DAQmx 7.5 only to find that your program which relies on Traditional DAQ no longer works.  This makes sense because in effect, you completely removed Traditional NI-DAQ support from your machine.  So try to install both DAQmx 7.5 and Traditional NI-DAQ 7.4 together and see if that works.

[ChrisErven]

Hi Hexar,

Sorry, I guess I'm not being clear in my posts. The NI guy told me to get BOTH the traditional DAQ 7.4 driver and the DAQmx 7.5 driver, to install the traditional driver first, and then to also install the DAQmx 7.5 driver. So they're both on there. There's something in the DAWmx 7.5 driver that fights with the traditional driver for resource allocation apparently. A NI applications engineer found a fix for it, here's the link:
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/6A73AE4A1104639686256C460081528C?OpenDocument
apparently it's a known problem. Anyways, the fix worked for anyone else who has this problem come up. Go to the link and download the tool.

Thanks for your efforts,
Chris

[marwic]

Chris, thanks you for this information. It also solved my similar problem I had with DAQmx and DAQ/Measurement Studio/VB6. It took me nearly one day of searching and testing and installing and reinstalling and .... :-(( Using palBase the first time allready solved my problem 🙂

Regards MarkusW

btw. for me your posts have been quite clear 😉

Message Edited by marwic on 09-09-2005 04:23 AM

[Bill_R]

I would like to utilize this tool. However, the link that was provided is either broken, incorrect or no longer availble.  Can anyone help me locate it so that I might solve my problem re: " error nidaq32.dll not found" ?

Thanks:   Bill

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/6A73AE4A1104639686256C460081528C?OpenDocument

[Marni]

Try this link.

[TrueIndian]

Thanks for the link to the fix...It really works..

U really saved my time..