Windows 10, USB 6009, and NI DAQmx base

[dmsilev]

I'm having an annoying issue that started when I upgraded a machine from W7 to W10 and trying to get a USB-6009 to work under MX base (v15) on a computer that has both the full and the base versions of NI DAQ installed. The problem is that when the device is plugged in to the computer, the driver that is auto-installed is the one appropriate for the full version of MX, not the base version. Following the guide on the NI knowledgebase (Document 1, Document 2), I went into Device Manager, changed the driver to the USB Multifunction device, and then went to the MX base 'update firmware' application to send base-appropriate firmware to the device. This procedure works fine under Windows 7. However, Windows 10 does ...something during the firmware update process and immediately reinstalls the full MX driver, which of course is no help.

I can if need be rewrite my LabView code to use the full MX library, but I would prefer not to since this particular widget needs to be able to run on both a PC and a Mac and I'd rather not maintain a forked code base with two different driver libraries. 

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Mike.B]

This is a peculiar issue. At first I was suspicious if DAQmx Base 15.0 is supported by Windows 10, but this white paper confirms it is. What version of the full DAQmx driver is on your system?

[dmsilev]

Hi Mike,

Ni-DAQmx 17.0 is installed. 

What seems to be going on is that when the 6009 is put into firmware update mode, Windows re-enumerates it as a new device (it shows up for a couple of seconds in Device Manager as something like NI Firmware Update or similar) and then fingerprints the hardware and auto-installs the "correct" device driver. 

I did find a brute-force solution, which was to tell Windows to delete the full-MX device driver for the 6009, after which I was able to reflash the firmware without issue. I don't anticipate needing support for full-MX for the 6009 on that machine, so that works for now, but it's obviously not suitable as a general solution.

[Mike.B]

Glad you found a brute-force solution for now! Please post back if you find a more tailored solution.