Installing a PCI 734x on Windows 7

[panics]

I am trying to get a fresh installation of Windows 7 and/or MAX to recognize PCI-6229 and PCI-734x (I believe it is a 7342). The former works just fine, while the latter doesnt. I followed the instructions in the Motion Control 7340 user manual

Here is what Windows' device manager shows. Note the unrecognized device 'PCI Simple communications controller'. I assume that this is the PCI-734x :

When I open MAX 5.0.0f1, this is what I see. Note the unidentified pxI system - is that supposed to be there ? (I installed NI Motion 8.3)

Any idea(s) on what I could do to get the PCI-734x to be correctly recognized ?

Thanks in advance,

Sacha

[Wee-Bey]

Hi Sacha.

So it seems like your motion card is not being associated with the driver properly. This might be because you installed NI-Motion after putting the card in the slot. There are a couple of ways we can get this to work.

First: Device Manager

In Device Manager, right-click the card and choose "Update Driver" if you can.

Second: Remove and Re-insert the Card

1) Uninstall the NI-Motion.

2) Turn off the machine.

3) Remove the motion controller card.

4) Turn on the machine.

5) Install NI-Motion.

6) Turn off the machine.

7) Insert the motion controller card.

😎 Turn on the machine.

Hopefully this works. 🙂

[panics]

Hi Ravi,

Thanks for your response. I tried both suggestions, and neither worked. I did find out the following: the unrecognized PCI device is not the NI PCI 734x, since it was still there after I had removed the card. After I went through your second suggestion, neither the PCI 734x nor the PCI 6229 is recognized by Windows anymore! Using a tool called 'system information for windows' I can see that the PCI 6229 is there (and recognized by SIW) however Windows does not recognize it. Neither Windows nor SIW seems to recognize the PCI 734x.

I am now installing Windows XP to see if that makes a difference. It is our intention to write software to control these two cards using Visual Studio .NET, and if I understand it correctly that only works with Visual Studio 2005 (which in turn works better with Windows XP)

Thanks for your help,

Sacha

[panics]

After reinstalling Windows XP Professional, here is what I found:

• Before putting in the PCI 6229 and PCI 7342 the Windows device manager shows that all devices are recognized, have drivers installed, and are working correctly
• I followed Ravi's instructions for the order in which to install the NI Motion software / PCI 6229 and PCI 7342 hardware
• The PCI 6229 and PCI 7342 do not show up in Windows device manager
• The PCI 6229 and PCI 7342 do not show up in NI Motion 

I have tried everything that I could think of to get these PCI cards installed properly. I am currently stuck and do not know what to do in order to get these cards to work properly. Please advise.

Thanks,

Sacha

[Wee-Bey]

Sacha,

I'm sorry to hear that your 6229 is not recognized either. Keep in mind though that this is not a Motion Controller Card. It is actually a Data Acquisition card (DAQ card), which means that it has different drivers that it needs to function, the NI-DAQmx drivers. Ensure that those drivers are installed to get the 6229 working on the XP installation.

Have you tried the 734x on another machine? You should try this to ensure that it's working properly.

Finally, do you still have a PCI Simple Communications Controller in Device Manager? If so, right-click on it, go to Properties >> Details, and you will see a code that looks something like "PCI/VEN_8086&DEV_27D8&SUBSYS...". This is a vendor code and device name, which can help identify exactly what it's referring to.

[panics]

Hi Ravi,

Thanks for your response. I am aware that the PCI 6229 is a Daq board and needs different drivers, which I also installed. The machine that I am currently using was a (redundant) backup machine with (I believe) Windows NT or 2000 installed on it. It was working properly- however for our current project we needed a more recent OS. 

The "PCI Simple Communications Controller in Device Manager" message was still present after removing both 7342 and 6229 PCI cards, but went away after I made sure that all the latest motherboard drivers were installed. Since I have prior professional experience developing PCI hardware (and the required software such as drivers and applications), I am aware of the vendor code and device name 🙂

I may end up trying to get it to work in another desktop PC. However, ultimately we need it to work in a 19'' rackmounted PC (I work at a university, we are using the NI hardware in some experimental setups which require that all computers are 19'' rackmounted PC's). 

Thanks again for all your help.

Sacha

[Wee-Bey]

Sacha,

Haha, it sounds like you know what you're doing with PCI then.

Basically, if you have NI-Motion installed (which I'd check for in Measurement & Automation Explorer), and you then put the card in, it should definitely show up. This installation order is a pretty frequent reason cards don't show up. Even if you uninstalled/removed the card and then did everything in the right order, putting the card in the same slot might make it a redundant setup, which could cause it to fail detection. Perhaps you can try a different slot if you haven't already.

Also consider that the motion card is not going to appear next to all the other DAQmx devices, but rather in a section called "NI-Motion" on its own.

[panics]

Hi Ravi,

So I gave it another try. I started by removing both PCI 6229 and 7342 cards, followed by a drive reformat, and a clean install of Windows XP Professional. I allowed WindowsXP to update itself using windows update. I proceeded to install NIDAQ940f5Full, downloaded from the NI website. After I put the PCI 6229 card back in and rebooted, it shows up in both Windows Device Manager and the NI Measurement & Automation application. So far so good 🙂

I continued to install NIMotion830. After I put the PCI 7342 card back in a new device shows up in the Windows Device Manager called "other pci bridge controller" :

The Device Instance Id for this device is: PCI\VEN_1093&DEV_0000&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_00\4&35FAE160&0&10F0

According to this website, vendor id 1093 is NI. But the device is not recognized and/or no drivers can be found. I tried to manually update the driver, but the necessary driver files don't seem to be installed with NI Motion in the c:\program files\... location, and they also dont seem to be included with the application setup files. I also tried to manually select which driver to install from a huge list; I can see a category there for 'data acquisition devices' but not for any NI motion controllers.

Do you have any suggestions on what to do next? 

Thanks again for your help.

Sacha

[Wee-Bey]

Hmm, so does NI-Motion appear in Measurement & Automation Explorer? This is how it appears for me. 

In addition, the location to point to is in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\nimcdfxkl.sys or nimcdfxkw.sys. You could try pointing to those as well. There's a chance NI-Motion isn't getting installed properly, perhaps because it doesn't have permissions of some kind from wherever you're running it?

[JB]

Did you include the support for NI 73xx controllers when you installed NI Motion ?

See screen capture from my French NI Device Drivers installer :