USBTMC Blue Screen of Death (BSoD)

[MarkDJ]

We have developed a product that enumerates as a USBTMC device so that our customers can utilize LabView to control and retrieve data.

It works fine with Windows XP and seems to work fine with Vista, but when connected to a Windows 7 PC, it enumerates and then about 20 seconds later I get the Blue Screen of Death.  A link to the file is attached:  

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23097942/Minidump/090611-35895-01.dmp

I have watched the USB comms with a sniffer and I am not seeing any red flags.

I have VISA 5.0.3 installed.

Looking at the minidump file I can see that ausbtmc.sys seems to be the problem, but I am not sure where to go from here.

Any thoughts?

Mark

[Eric_L]

Hello MarkDJ,

I had a look into the dmp file your have uploaded and the cause of the crash appears to be ausbtmc.sys. The crash is likely caused by conflicting VISA drivers. Please have a look at the following forum link which talks about this issue in a little more depth.

http://forums.ni.com/t5/Instrument-Control-GPIB-Serial/The-difference-between-NI-MAX-and-Agilent-VIS...

Eric

[Justin_E]

Hey Mark, this is actually a known issue with the IVI Shared Component ausbtmc.sys. A version of the IVI Shared components that contains a fix to ausbtmc.sys will be released in a few weeks, but in the meantime you can manually install the fixed ausbtmc.sys. First, can you tell me if you're running Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit so I can provide you with the appropriate file?

[MarkDJ]

That sounds great!

I am running the 64-bit version of Windows 7.

Thanks,

Mark

[Justin_E]

Mark,

First, download and extract the contents of this file:

ftp://ftp.ni.com/outgoing/ausbtmc.zip

You'll also need to obtain the 64-bit version of DPInst.exe. You can get it by installing the Windows Driver Kit:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=11800

2) Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository, and look for any folder that starts with "ausbtmc.inf". Each of those folders should contain the actual ausbtmc.inf file. We need to uninstall these INFs.
3) From the command line, run DPInst with the following command:
DPInst /U <path to existing ausbtmc.inf>
This will uninstall the old ausbtmc.inf driver. Do this for every folder that starts with "ausbtmc.inf". You can verify the drivers are removed by checking to see if there are any "ausbtmc.inf" folder left. If there are not, the uninstall has been completed and you can proceed to the next steps.
4) From the command line run the following command:
DPInst /PATH <path to DIRECTORY containing new ausbtmc.inf>
This will install the new ausbtmc.inf driver. Note that you cannot point to the .inf file directly, you must point to the directory.
5) Follow the wizard to install the driver, then plugin your USBTMC instrument to ensure you no longer see the blue screen.

Let me know whether or not this fixes things, thanks!

[minkain]

Dear Justin

I have VISA 5.0.3 installed and running the 64-bit version of Windows 7.

I have the same problem likes MarkDJ, I solved this problem by install "IVISharedComponents_1.4.msi".

Blue screen and ausbtmc.sys issue will be solved. I try to uninstall NI-VISA 5.0.3 and IVISharedComponent, and then install newest version of NI-VISA(5.1.1).

Blue screen appear again.

Can you tell me what version of IVISharedComponents will be installed when I install NI-VISA 5.1.1?

If version of IVISharedComponents older than 1.4, Is it the major problem cause the blue screen appear?

If the above mentioned right, the next version of NI-VISA will change the version of IVISharedComponents on default installation?

Thank you. 

[Nuesel]

Hello,

we have the same problem: We developed our USB TMC device and we have problems on Windows Vista/7 64 bit platforms since the end of 2010. On these OSs we get a bluescreen pointing at the mentioned ausbtmc.sys. It took nearly half a year, to get the problem confirmed as a NI VISA problem. A new VISA driver was released in August this year, but the problem remained. Some of our customers only work on 64-bit platforms and in the meanwhile they became irksome. When will be the next release of VISA?? Is the error fixed in the next version?

[Justin_E · Accepted solution]

Hi everyone,

ausbtmc.sys is part of the IVI VISA Shared Components, which is maintained by the IVI Foundation. When we released VISA 5.1.1, a version of the IVI components that contain the fix to ausbtmc.sys was not yet available, so unfortunately this fix did not make its way into VISA 5.1.1. Since then, IVI VISA Shared Components version 1.4 has been released, which does contain the fix. You can download the shared components directly from here, which resolves this USBTMC issue:

http://ivifoundation.org/shared_components/Default.aspx

The next version of NI-VISA that we release will contain the latest version of the IVI Shared Components. This release is scheduled for sometime in Q1 2012

[Nuesel]

Thanks a lot for the link.

Nuesel

[MarkDJ]

We have tried this solution and it has fixed our blue screen problem.

Many thanks!!!!!