Why do my LabVIEW executables lose GPIB functionality after updating 488.2 drivers

[EricBSEE]

About a year ago on a remote test fixture i had set up for a manufacturing line, a worker had decided to run the National Instruments Update Service on the test PC and updated all available programs. After this update none of the GPIB functions worked on the test executable for the LabVIEW test software. After running Automation Explorer I was able to confirm that all GPIB instruments were still present, functioning and aliases were still correct. The only way i was able to fix this issue was by wiping out all National Instrument software and reinstalling it all again.

Yesterday on a  local test machine, the same thing happened. This time the full 488.2 driver package was installed from a USB stick in order to update the 488.2 drivers on the machine and afterwards none of the GPIB functions worked, causing all of the LabVIEW test executables to lock up. Again, Automation Explorer shows that the GPIB instruments are installed and functioning and all aliases are still correct. I wiped out all of the NI software and reinstalled but now i stil can't get these LabVIEW programs to work correctly.

Has anyone else expereinced this problem?

What is the solution? 

[crossrulz]

What version of 488.2 and LabVIEW were you using?  It could simply be that you were using an older version of LabVIEW that is no longer supported with the latest driver package.

[EricBSEE]

In both cases the fixtures had an old NI488.2 version 2.2.6 installed which was working for the executable created on LabVIEW 2013. The most recent USB stick update was installing NI488.2 version 14.0 and I'm not sure about the verision number of the online update that was done on the remote fixture a year ago.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Did you also update the version of NI-VISA? You should check compatibility between the two of those as well as LabVIEW.

[EricBSEE]

NI-VISA version 14.0.0 was also included as part of the NI488.2 verision 14.0 installation package

[Dennis_Knutson]

Do you get any sort of error with the program? Have you tried rebuilding with the remote debugging option to see where the faults occur? What about I/O Trace to log your VISA Reads and Writes? That should also show errors in the VISA functions that are called.

[EricBSEE · Accepted solution]

After looking back the problem at the remote facility it appeared that after a year of operation, the issue occurred after updating the 488.2 drivers to tthe new version 14.0

The remedy was to install the previous v3.1.2 drivers back on the system.

I uninstalled all version 14 software from NI off of my test fixture PC and installed the v3.1.2 NI-488.2 package and all of the executables began functioning again.

The readme file for VISA runtime v14.0 states that it is comaptible with LabVIEW versions 2011-2014, but apparently there is some issue at least with 2013 that affected me.