LabVIEW constantly crashes

[Ian Southerton]

I have a PXI-1031 chassis, with a PXI-8310 interface and cardbus plugged into the PCMCIA port of a new Dell Core2 Duo laptop with 2GB RAM, running Windows XP.  There are a PXI-6602, a PXI-6221 and a ComSoft DF PROFI II in the chassis.  Almost every time I run LabVIEW (version 8.2.1), whether vi's are running, or not, LabVIEW crashes, causing the laptop to completely lock up.  Often, when the cardbus is plugged into the laptop, Windows won't even boot up.  This is now causing big problems as we are starting the Customer Testing phase of the project.  Please could you give me some pointers as to what the problem might be.

[hannahW]

What is the laptop that you are using this with? There have been some reported problems of using this system with certain laptops, and as a result, a list of laptops that National Instruments have validated the CardBus 8310 against has been created:
http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/5036

When you say crash - what do you mean - do you see any errors in LabVIEW - do you have any screen shots? Is it just LabVIEW that crashes or are you having issues with other application software too?

What NI software do you have installed on the laptop?

Regards
Hannah
NIUK & Ireland

[Ian Southerton]

I have a Dell Latitude D520, with Intel Core2 Duo T7200 2.0GHz processors, and 1GB RAM (I thought it had 2GB when I wrote the original message).  It has an O2Micro OZ711EZ1 MemoryCardBus Controller.  It is running Windows XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 2.  When it goes wrong, everything just freezes, and the only way to get out of the problem is to hold down the 'Standby' button on the laptop until it switches off.  Sometimes it will boot straight back up, but sometimes Windows won't even boot up.  If this happens, unplugging the CardBus 8310 and booting up again sorts the problem.  It is definitely something associated with LabVIEW that is causing the crashes, as this is often the only application running, but as the whole laptop locks up, no LabVIEW error messages appear.  Is there a LabVIEW log, or anything like that which might throw some light on the problem?

The problem seems to be worse the more LabVIEW is doing.  For example, I am using an example of a Profibus Master vi from Comsoft, which has a default process update time of 10ms.  However, if the vi runs at that speed, LabVIEW crashes almost immediately.  After some trial and error, it seems to be fairly stable at an update time of 1s, but this will not be sufficient to carry out the testing that I need to do.

I have looked on your validated laptop list, and the Latitude D520 is not there.  Does that mean that it has been tested and problems have been found, or has it not yet been tested?

Thanks for your help so far......

Ian

[LeeM]

Hi Ian,

    As your laptop is not on the list it means that it has not been validated for use with the cardbus 8310 PXI controller, this may be because we have not tested it yet, it could also be that it is not compatible. However, as your PCMCIA controller is an O2 micro controller and is likely similar to some of those on the approved list we would hope that this is not the case.

I would suggest a re-install of Windows XP and LabVIEW on the Laptop to help narrow down the issue to perhaps being hardware based. Also, do you have a different laptop you may be able to try this code on? If the re-install of windows does not work then we may be able to test your configuration here as we have some of that model of laptop here if you could send in your harware (the MXI kit) as well as the software you are running.

Let me know how you get on with this,

LeeM
NIUK

[Ian Southerton]

Hi Lee

The laptop has been rebuilt with Windows and LabVIEW re-installed.  However, it has made no difference.  I now cannot get past the 'Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete' screen, as this is the point where the laptop now locks up if the CardBus is inserted into the PCMCIA slot.  Without the CardBus inserted, the laptop works normally.  Can you think of anything that may cause this problem?  Our IT dept think that it may be a driver issue.

We have an HP laptop that I am going to install LabVIEW on as a test tomorrow.  I'll first check to see if the model is on your list, though.  I'll let you know how I get on with this experiment tomorrow.

Cheers

Ian

[LeeM]

Hello Ian,

   I am sorry to hear that this issue is still troubling you. The drivers for the cardbus itself will be included in Windows, as long as that is up to date then the drivers side of things should be ok. You have said that you have service pack 2 installed so it all sounds good.

One thing i will suggest checking is the BIOS revision you have installed on the Laptop. The latest revision that you can get according to DELL's website is A05. Could you check that you have the latest revision installed? If not i think it may be worth upgrading, this is noted as a critical update on DELL's website and it seems that the problems are coming in where the device is being initialised on Windows startup.

I was also wondering if you found the same problems occurred with the PXI chassis not connected to the cardbus 8310 on startup? If disconnecting the PXI system does not show the issue then what happens if you leave the chassis connected but with no PXI cards in the chassis?

How did the test on the other Laptop go? Was this laptop on the list of supported laptops/controllers do you know? If you can give me a model number for it i can check this out for you.

As i mentioned before we can test this kit for you as we have some of the laptops of the same model here, but we would require your MXI kit as it is difficult for us to get hold of the hardware. Is this a viable option for you?

Let me know how you get on,

LeeM

[Ian Southerton]

Hi Lee

The other laptop I tried was an HP Compaq nx6325.  It has dual AMD Turion processors and a Texas Instruments PCMCIA CardBus.  However, when I tried to install the 8310 CardBus Cotroller software from the CD, the installation process crashed, and the laptop would not boot up into Windows at all, even in Safe Mode after this  We tried repairing it using the Windows CD, but this didn't work.  In the end we had to wipe the hard drive and start again.  I'm not sure whether this was just a glitch or whether there is a real compatibility issue with this software and this laptop.  We haven't tried this again yet.  Have you ever seen anything like this before?  One of our IT engineers thinks that some corruption occurred when the 8310 software altered the boot.ini file.  Do you think it's worth trying to install the 8310 driver again on this laptop?

Anyway, the BIOS upgrade allowed me to boot up the Dell laptop and complete the installation of the drivers for the cards in the PXI Chassis, so I am back to where I was before the Windows and LabVIEW re-install.  Labview still hangs up as it did before.  Could this be caused by LabVIEW trying to do too much?  I have been trying with an example of a profibus driver from ComSoft.  I have edited it slightly to always send an output word to the slave device, rather than on the press of a button, but other than this it is a standard example vi.  It seems to run OK with a process update time of 50ms, but hung up if I reduced this time to 10ms (which is actually the example default).  I would have thought that a 10ms update time should not have presented a problem for LabVIEW running on this laptop.  But it also hung up earlier today as soon as I pressed the RUN VI arrow on another vi that does not normally present any problems, so the process update time issue could be a red herring.  If LabVIEW can't complete the instructions within a loop before the process update time is complete, what happens to LabVIEW?

I could run LabVIEW with the Windows Performance Monitor also running.  Is there any particular items I should monitor?

As far as getting the kit down to your office is concerned, it would probably be best if I brought it down, if that would be the best way to get to the bottom of this problem.  I would have to bring the Profibus Slave to give us a full system test.  If this seems to be the best option, when would you be available?

Many thanks

Ian

[LeeM]

Hello Ian,

     This laptop does not appear to be on the tested list either, there are also some known issues with HP BIOS and our software, so it may be the case that there are actually some incompatibility issues there as well. Do you have the latest BIOS on the HP laptop? It may just be one of those things on this install but as i said, there may be an incompatibilty issue with it so try it again if you are willing to.

  As for the DELL laptop, i am pleased to hear that you have managed to get into Windows now you have upgraded the BIOS, but we need to have a look at how LabVIEW is executing on the system. If you do run this with the Windows Performance monitor open then the key thing to keep and eye on is the memory usage. If you see this increasing at an alarming rate then it would look like you have a memory leak somewhere in the coding.

 For you to arrange a visit for this issue with us, could i ask you to call National Instruments and speak to your local sales representative. They will then be able to refer you to myself or Hannah who can be here for your visit. In terms of a date for this visit, any day next week we are available apart from Monday!!

The number you will need to call is 01635 523454.

If you view the system performance whilst running the code then let me know how you get on. Alternatively we can look into this when we actually have the hardware.

Many Thanks,

LeeM

[LeeM]

We tested the Cardbus 8310 with a laptop from the approved list to confirm that the device works correctly.
We then tested it on out Latitude D520's and can confirm that the cardbus 8310 is not compatible with the Dell Latitude D520.

LeeM
NIUK