Port In/Out under Windows Vista/7

[rolfk]

Repeating every single statement multiple times in eaach post makes them not more true but sounds a little bit ... strange.

And there exists no solution for Windows 64 Bit. In a few years from now most computers will all run with a 64 Bit OS, since that is the only way to make use of more than 4 GB of memory in a sensible way. So while you can get away with installing the 32 Bit variant for now, you are painting yourself in a corner when doing so.

[ejkaiser]

Noobie,

I don't know what you are complaining about. The initial poster asked about Port I/O and he received the information that it is no longer available in the current Windows versions. Period!

The poster in turn was not willing to provide any information about his intention and equipment. This would have opened an opportunity to think about alternative options that may have the potential to work around port I/O. The information about his industrial PC was useless in the context.

Btw, I am not affiliated with NI and I have drawn big benefits from the forum and the efforts of the participants.

Cheers

Edgar

[Norbert_B]

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noobie_programmer wrote:

[..]The public should take notice of the point that just saying someone is "wrong," does not make the individual "wrong".[..] 

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I think every participant in this forum concurs with this. Criticism of a statement is not criticism against the person as a whole.

Nobody wanted to offend you (or any other participant of the forum) by stating that your statement was "wrong". And to be honest, i don't have the feeling that Rolf or anyone else was rude (or "less than courteous" as you call it) against you nor anybody else.

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@noobie_programmer wrote:

[..]Operating systems are designed to input and output data.    Every O/S can input and output data. [..]

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And what kind of hardware are you exactly talking about here? Depending on the hardware, the drivers for the interfaces are already part of the OS, true. But many hardware interfaces require additional drivers.

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@noobie_programmer wrote:

[..]You will notice that I could argue that my statement was theoretically true and be theoretically correct.  But I will not. 

[..] "Simple" is a relative description.    This task is fairly simple if you are a programmer employed to design, create, and program the operating system.

I will concede that it is not a simple task, if you are an "outsider" looking in  (a programmer with no inside information from the OSdesigner). [..] 

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Reading this passage implies to me that you KNOW a secret solution. So why don't you provide it? Why don't you prove that well-known and excepted experts are wrong in their statement that port IO on Windows 7 is NOT an easy, read "simple", task?
Or are you expecting the experts to hide their knowledge, to keep an "internal elitist circle" where no-one except themselves is welcome? That is not the case, proven  by the fact that they provide help to anyone asking in this forum.....

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@noobie_programmer wrote:

[..]This is where my analysis becomes irrefutable.  Here is a link which substanciates that a "solution" was found a long time ago by National Instruments itself:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/496CD7613F331EA4862571E200633507

[..] 

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You do read what you link, don't you?

Because reading this passage:

With Microsoft's push towards greater system security, there will be reduced functionality for the LabVIEW In Port and Out Port VIs when used with Windows Vista. This is due to the fact that the In Port and Out Port VIs allow read/write access to any I/O port on the system, which is discouraged for security reasons on the Vista OS.

i see a perfect acknowledgement of Rolf's statements regarding Port IO.

Since the KB is more than SIX years old now, it does not mention Windows 7. But the first sentence already indicates, that "future Windows versions" (predicted in 2006) will close the security gap of direct, unmanaged port access, which we are seeing now with Windows 7.

You might argue and dislike it, but direct Port IO is not possible with Windows 7 64bit anymore and it is foreseeable that other, future OS versions will not change that.

Port IO functions in LV will get obsolete (which btw is already stated in the linked KB as "VIs do not appear in the Functions palette").

So i quote Andrew Troelson, the author of some Microsoft books (esp. C#):

[..]Regardless of the frustration you can feel when upgrading your internal knowledge base, it is unavoidable.[..]

just my 5 cents,

Norbert

PS: It would be polite to signature the post with your real (first) name at least..... so much about "courteous".

[noobie_programmer]

I read the link I posted: 

With regard to VISTA:

 "VIs execute properly (allows upgraded applications to run properly)"

I was referring to the VISTA O/S, that should have been obvious.  

A solution has been found, but not made available to the public.   

My points were correct.  

Again, the original person who posed this question had every right to pose this question.   

Take notice, that  a group of individuals only takes notice my post, which supports the person's right to pose the question, and they do not criticize the replies which offered no aid to the person who raised the question.

Please take notice of an irrefutable fact:

I provided the link written by national instruments, itself, no one else did.  

I will repeat this point again:

NO ONE ELSE POSTED THIS LINK.

I would like to thank the people who had written construcive replies, and as you can see there is no further reason for me to post any other replies in deference to the person who had originally posted this question.

As you can obviously see, there are a lot opinions about how points are expressed (which do not substantively aid the person who raised the question), few facts, and no code, to actually help this person.   

I try to be fair and helpful, and I pay the price.

[rolfk]

What more publicity than a public post on the support page of the manufacturer of the software do you want? Why could the OP, who is not a LabVIEW noob at all as I know him from the German LabVIEW webforum for some years too, not have searched for that post himself with the search feature of this support forum? In fact the OP even operates since several years his own webforum in parallel to the German one, mostly concentrating on east European languages.

He never gave more precise information if he was using 32 bit Windows or 64 bit Windows. With one it can be done although it is officially a depreciated feature and the VIs are not visible in the palettes anymore, while with the other it can not be done, period. The error messages as posted in his post only leaves two possibiilties open:

1) The installation of the LabVIEW software failed on his 32 bit system somehow and he should try to fix that and eventually move to newer LabVIEW versions who does have some other changes to work better with Windows 7.

2) He is running on 64 Bit Windows and there is no chance that he can get those VIs to work.

[noobie_programmer]

I am going to reply once more and never again because I have to show the public that the responses do not even consider the points I tried to make.

The title of this post references VISTA and also Windows 7.

My replies referred to VISTA.   This should have been obviouse from my last post.  Apparently my post was not read.  

Since I only referred to VISTA, the points 1 and 2 by the last respondent are "ancilliary." 

Again, lots of opinions, no code.  

[rolfk]

I'm not posting much of code nowadays but you are free to look at the OpenG Port IO library hosted by sourceforge that I wrote years ago. It includes also the C source code for the necessary user space DLL and kernel device driver.

As to Vista or Windows 7, the original post was about Windows Vista/7 actually, exactly with this writing. The impossibility to do this under 64 bit Windows remains the same for all 64 bit versions of Windows be it XP, Vista or 7 (and I'm sure 8 too). Of course NI never supported the 64 bit versions of Windows with LabVIEW before Windows 7 but it can be installed and made to run on them except that the Port IO functions and some other things will simply not work.

The technical difference between Windwos Vista and Windows 7 are rather small. They use exactly the same kernel architecture and user space system. Microsoft mostly made the security improvements in Vista more user friendly as in their first trial with Windows Vista they added security without consideration for the user experience. So doing certain things could require several password entry dialogs in a row and similar funny things.

Most likely Windows 9 or whatever it will be called will not install as 32 bit OS at all anymore. Apple showed that users can be forced into this with some determination and guzpe.

[billko]

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@rolfk wrote:

<snip>

Most likely Windows 9 or whatever it will be called will not install as 32 bit OS at all anymore. Apple showed that users can be forced into this with some determination and guzpe.

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Learned something new - never knew how to spell "guzpe!"  Thanks!

[tst]

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@billko wrote:

...never knew how to spell "guzpe!"  Thanks!

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And you still don't. The word basically means "gall" in Hebrew, and it has come into widespread use in English through Yiddish (where it also acquired the extra meaning of "attitude" and the stress on the first syllable. In spoken Hebrew the stress is on the second one). The more common spelling would be Chutzpah.

[NIquist]

I, for one, am glad to have someone like noobie around to protect me from the evil machinations of posters like Rolf and smercurio!  Sure, they have provided an incredible amount of assistance to hundreds of their peers in these forums.  Sure, they offer up their quality code and expect nothing in return.  Sure, they write tutorials to share their experience and publish them for free.   

But if they can't respond to everything in such a sickly-sweet, politically correct, condescending manner that it makes my teeth hurt what good are they???

I'll repeat that:  If they can't respond to everything in such a sickly-sweet, politically correct, condescending manner that it makes my teeth hurt what good are they???