measurement and automation explorer did not detect my hardware

[lloydt]

I cannot find my NI USB-6251 in the Measurement and Automation explorer. What seems to be the problem? I had NI-DAQmx  8.5 installed already on my system. I am running on windows vista, could this a problem?

I even check the hardware on windows  device manager and I saw it was properly detected and installed. What could be wrong? please help... 😞

[MickeyD]

Hi Lloydt,

It sounds like you did everything correctly.  A few things I wanted to check.  Did you have a previous version of DAQmx on the system and upgrad to 8.5, or is this the first DAQmx install on the Vista machine.  The DAQmx 8.5 driver is Vista compatible, so that should be behaving correctly.  Something could be corrupted with your MAX install.  I would recommend going to Add/Remove programs and repairing your MAX install.  This will require you to have the driver CD, or downloaded files you installed from.  I will look for other related issues.  The DAQmx 8.5 driver is working with Vista, but I will see if I can find any related cases.  Let me know if repairing your MAX install results in the desired behavior.

Have a great week,

Michael D
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[lloydt]

Hi,

I tried doing your instructions, I initiated repair on MAX and restarted, but the problem still persist.

The DAQmx 8.5 installer came from the net, which I downloaded since I have vista on my PC. The installer cd that came with the NI DAQ hardware was DAQmx 8.3. but i opted to use 8.5 instead. I also have DAQmx base installed also, thinking that may help resolve the issue. (did install DAQmx base frst then reinstall DAQmx 8.5). but still that doesnt help.

I also tried installing to a XP PC. and everything seems to work well but the sad thing is that, it is not PC ;-).

hope you could help me running on vista.

regards

Lloyd

[Ed W]

Hi Lloyd,

Does the USB-6251 show up in Device Manager? 

If not, then there may be something wrong with your USB ports – could you try some other USB hardware to see if Vista recognizes it.

If the 6251 does show up in Device Manager, try right-clicking on it and selecting “Update Driver…”  From here, you can manually install the drivers for that device, and it should show up in MAX.

We got the USB-6251 to work fine on a Vista machine here using DAQmx 8.5, so it should work on your machine too.  Please post back with the results.  Thanks!

Ed W.

Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[lloydt]

yes it does show up in the device manager but never on MAX, everytime I tried to expand Devices and Interfaces in MAX it always has an error of "There was a problem connecting to the database. Please restart your computer and contact National Instruments if the problem persist."

[Ed W]

Hi Lloyd,

This is a known issue with MAX – we actually have a Knowledge Base entry on this issue. 

Why Do I Get a Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX) Database Connection Error?

After going through the article, post back if you have further questions.  Once MAX is up and running, you may still need to select Update Driver for your device within Device Manager. 

Ed W.

Applications Engineer
National Instruments