NI-DIO-32HS is not recognized by non-administrator account

[WarrenPoschman]

I've been seeing something strange that I can't quite seem to get around.  I have a PCI-GPIB (NI-488.2 v2.2) and an NI-DIO-32HS (NI-DAQ Traditional v7.1.0f1) installed in a standard WinXP Pro workstation.  Under the admin account, both cards appear to work normally.  However, when I switch to a User account (aka Restricted User) the NI-DIO-32HS is no longer recognized.  I can log in and log out, reboot, reinstall NI software to no avail.  Under the admin account, everything works fine.

When running my application, which is a VB 6 app, I get the infamous "Error 48: Cannot load nidaq.dll" error and in MAX I see the following strange message.  I believe that the Error 48 is just because it cannot recognize the NI-DIO-32HS card and hence it seems as if it is not installed.

Any ideas?  I've seen this error before but the solutions that are posted (using palbase, unlocking permissions in the registry and NI directories) seem to not have any effect.

Message Edited by WarrenPoschman on 08-22-2005 04:33 PM

[Tom_W_[DE]]

Hi Warren-

The suggestions you allude to from various KnowledgeBase entries here and here are the best suggestions to use when trying to overcome this administrator rights problem.  This is a problem only with Traditional NI-DAQ; the problem does not exist in NI-DAQmx.

Unfortunately if these suggestions are not helpful then there is little more that can be done as this is a conflict between Windows permissions and the driver files that Traditional NI-DAQ requires access to.  One strategy several users have employed in the past was to give temporary administrator rights to accounts that would be accessing the driver and resetting the accounts to non-admin status when use is complete.

Hopefully this helps-

[WarrenPoschman]

Tom-

I've done some more legwork and tracked the problem further.  It seems that the NI-DAQ software is writing some temporary files to:

   National Instruments\Shared\platform\memory\sharedMemoryFiles

I had to open up WRITE/MODIFY permissions on this folder and then everything seems to work.

Can I redirect these temp files to another location?  What is in these files and can we elect to not create them?  We only allow one user to use the system and the DAQ setups, last states, or whatnot would not need to be shared, saved, or recorded for later use.  The best solution (for us) would be to avoid writing anything if at all possible.

Despite your explanation, being blunt, the cause of this is the NI design, not a Windows defect.  If these files were written to a standard temp location, where all apps/users can write, then there wouldn't be an issue even to report.  I am hopeful that you can elaborate on how I could redirect this but the Traditional driver just needs to be revved to conform to defacto WinXP file management.

Thanks for your help!

-Warren

[Tom_W_[DE]]

Hi Warren-

I'm glad to hear you were able to get your system up and running now.  The information about the additional directory permissions was removed from this KB a while back, but I will add it back in.

There is no method to prevent the creation of the files in question- they are generated automatically with access to the Traditional (Legacy) NI-DAQ driver and can not be redirected or prevented.  While it is still supported, the Traditional (Legacy) NI-DAQ driver is no longer actively maintained, but this problem has been addressed and corrected in NI-DAQmx after version 7.4 as I mentioned before.

Thanks-