cDAQ-9174 WinXP usb hotfix

[_Bryan]

I am setting up a new machine with a cDAQ-9174 that runs a 8.6.1 exe.  Everything seems fine, but I went to add a scale and noticed a strange message in MAX.  It said to search for "windowsxpusbhotfix" and to search the knowledgebase for "5F81A72I".  Something to do with USB data.

I tried searching for each of those and only came up with a post from 2004 or so, but the knowledge base article was different.  The computer is running XP service pack 3.

[_Bryan]

The knowledge base article is actually "5F8IA72I", I changed an I to a 1.  Searching for the correct article helps.

It points to a Microsoft site.  It is strange that this does not show up on my development machine though.  Oh well, I will install it tomorrow and see if the warning goes away.

[John_P1 · Accepted solution]

Hi Bryan,

Here's the link to the KB for reference.

The issue is a bug in the Windows XP USB driver (which was actually discovered and reported by NI).  Microsoft has a fix for it which is available here, but NI cannot directly offer this patch for licensing reasons.  Sadly, Microsoft is not pushing this fix through Windows Update so NI decided to try to pro-actively notify customers of the possible issue.

A note linking to the Microsoft KB was first added to the DAQmx 9.0 readme, then made more prominent in the 9.1 readme.  Since there was still (a valid) concern that many people don't actually read the readme files, a notification was added to MAX in DAQmx 9.3.  If your development machine is on a previous version of DAQmx, or if you already have the hotfix installed, then you wouldn't see the warning.  Note that the warning itself by-design doesn't disable any functionality, it is just intended to notify customers of the behavior.

As far as consequences of not having the hotfix installed, the KB pretty much sums it up.  You might see crashes or incorrect data in the form of channel swapping.  The behavior itself is actually pretty difficult to reproduce (I remember running overnight tests that repeatedly start and stop tasks with random intervals and still not seeing it on all systems), but nonetheless data integrity is of course a huge concern to NI so we want to make sure that customers are appropriately notified of the bug and pointed to the appropriate solution.

If you have any questions/concerns about it let me know and I can contact you directly to discuss.

Best Regards,

[_Bryan]

I am usually guilty when it comes to not reading all of the readme files.  I do think my machine has an earlier version of DAQmx.

Thanks