Visual Studio app crash after rebooting PXI chassis and relaunching the application

[Nathan_Reyes]

This may be an obvious question, but I can't seem to figure it out.

I have my first working Visual Studio program (VB.net) running fine using the following hardware:

PCIe Card in PC: NI PCIe-8431/16

PXI Chassis: PXI-1045

3 PXI Relay Cards: NI PXI-2659

No exceptions. No problems. So I quit the application. I turn off the chassis. I turn on the chassis and wait a minute. I relaunch the application.

No communcation with the chassis and exceptions occur. So I open Measurement & Automation Explorer, and all of the hardware is x'd out. Reference the attached image when trying to run the VISA test panel for the chassis.

It seems to be a memory location problem, so I must reboot the computer to get it operational again.

Is this just something that I can't avoid? Seems like I should be able to restart the chassis without having to reboot my computer every time.

[Izzzzz]

Hello Nathan_Reyes, 

Are you using an embedded controller i.e.. PXI-81xx or a Remote Controller (external computer MXI to the chassis)? If you are using a MXI connection, please take a look at the following section from of the MXI-Express x1 Users Manual this applies to all MXI connections.  

To summarize this seems to be an issue with shutting down the chassis before you power off the computer. This is equivalent to ripping out a PCI card from your computer while it is still on and can lead to blue screens. Why are you trying to reboot the chassis? You could simply reset the individual cards in the chassis via Measurement & Automation Explorer or the C# call to the reset function (depending if the cards support a reset functionality). 

Best Regards,

Izzy O.

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

www.ni.com/support

[Nathan_Reyes]

Izzy,

I am using an external remote controller in my PC (PCIe-8362).

My desire to shut down the chassis was simply to conserve power on the chassis and the cards when I left work to go home at the end of the day.

Also, we liked to leave the PC powered on all the time, as it performs functions at night and in the morning before I come to work.

That's ok. We can either shut down the PC at the end of the day as well, or leave the chassis running all the time (although I'm not sure how harmful that would be to the PXI chassis/cards).

Thanks for the feedback. Who knew you could learn something form the manual? 🙂

[Izzzzz]

Hello Nathan,

I guess you have 3 options. 

1. You could shutdown the computer and shut down the chassis then reboot the computer so that it could perfrom the overnight tasks and morning operations. Just ensure that when you come in during the morning you will need to power down the computer, reboot the chassis and then rebooth the computer. 

2. You could also move the operation that needs to be run at night and in the morning to another computer and shutdown the chassis and the computer (in the correct order).

3. There typically is not an issue with leaving PXI chassis overnight, it wont be harmful to your cards.

Regards,

Izzy O.

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

www.ni.com/support