Why do we get "Failure to initialize dynamic link library nipalu.dll"?

[SW_Engineer]

We have two laptops connected by Ethernet. Each sees the other as a normal drive.

Laptop A has the NI DAQ drivers and Visual C++ installed. It is our development environment. Laptop B has the PCMCIA DAQCard 6533 installed in the PCMCIA port.

The DAQ application is stored on Laptop A, but launched, via shortcut, on laptop B. The application launches fine on laptop A (but this is of no use, obviously).

I have tried installing the NI-DAQ drivers on Laptop B, but I get the same problem...

Failure to initialize dynamic link library nipalu.dll

THANKS!

[aperez]

There is no question that NI-DAQ needs to be installed on both laptops. Since that didn't solve your problem, I would suggest you take a look at the following KB

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/3efedde4322fef19862567740067f3cc/38afa6f57a0edc1586256ab2005cc81d?OpenDocument

If the symptoms are similar to yours, there is a patch you can download to fix this problem. In essence, a VC++ dll is conflicting with the nipalu dll and thus the latter fails to load. The patch should fix that.

Regards,
Azucena

[SW_Engineer]

Azucena,

Thank you for your comments. Three questions come to mind:

1)If I must install NI-DAQ (do you mean just the dll or the entire environment?) on both machines, what are the licensing issues? Note that I only use one for development.

2)Why do you say NI-DAQ needs to be installed on both machines? I launch my application on my remote machine using a shortcut pointing to the application where it resides on the _development_ machine. My app should therefore be able to see all required files (dlls, etc.) on the development machine even though it is running on the remote machine. To the remote machine the development machine merely looks like a normal drive.

3) I don't see how the patch can help; Since I'm running my app on the remote
machine (which doesn't have Visual C++ installed) it won't see any Visuall C++ modules in memory because they reside in memory (when they're there) on the development machine. Plus, when I do run this app on the development machine, it runs fine!

Thanks very much!

Les

[aperez]

Hi Les,

NI-DAQ is freely distributable. So there are no licensing issues involved. I meant installing the whole driver NI-DAQ on both computers. Specifically, NI-DAQ needs to be installed where the DAQ card is installed. If an appliation is linking to nidaq32.dll, then NI-DAQ needs to be installed on the system where this app is running.

Maybe the error you were getting is due to the missing nipalu.dll on the remote machine since you mentioned that the app runs correctly on your development machine.

Just some thoughts,
Azucena

[TonyH]

Les,

(2) Not quite true. Although your application resides on the development machine, the code will be loaded and run on the remote machine. This means that when that code requests to use services provided by an NI-DAQ DLL, it will attempt to locate and load that DLL on the remote machine. Installing an instrument driver requires more than just having the DLL present. The operating system on the remote machine needs to know about the DLL and what services it provides (i.e. the DLL must be registered, something the NI-DAQ installer does for you), plus most hardware requires other supporting files or device drivers to be present. You need to install the NI-DAQ driver (free of charge) on any machine that has NI data acquisition hardware instal
led in it, whether you are running local or remote applications.

TonyH
Measurement Studio
NI