PCI DIO 96 problems with Vista

[CaptainBlight]

Hello,

    I'm a computer hardware technician who works for a company that produces industrial systems for the printing industry.  Most of our systems contains a Dell computer, with a single PCI-DIO-96 card installed to control our machine, as well as a 9-pin serial port to read from a digital scale indicator. 

My problem is that recently, the world seems to have overnight gone to Windows Vista, and I'm having severe trouble getting the National Instruments hardware to work properly with it.  I install the DIO card, and then the NIDAQmx 8.5 drivers, and everything seems to work fine for about a week.  We run our software, relays are clicking, inputs are lighting up, we figured we got lucky and National Instruments did their homework and wrote some good drivers for Vista.  We reboot the machines a few times, just to make sure everything took, and there are no problems what-so-ever...

Then anywhere from 3 days to a week passes, and suddenly, for no reason at all, the boards stop working, and Vista reports in the Device Manager "This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use. (Code 12) If you want to use this device, you will need to disable one of the other devices on this system.".   I've disabled everything unnecessary on the system (audio, extra USB ports).   I've tried other PCI-DIO-96 boards (we always have a few in stock) and nothing.

Here's the kicker...  NOTHING changed.  The machine is isolated and not online, no new hardware or software was installed, the machine just decided to "stop working".  Uninstalling and reinstalling the NIDAQmx software once or twice or swapping PCI slots the card sits in seems to fix the issue for a while, but it always returns!  When Windows Vista reports the board is in the "Code 12" state, it remains in that state indefinately.  Rebooting, etc doesn't fix it. 

I'd love to continue using Windows XP, but nobody carries it anymore and Microsoft has yanked it from the shelves.  Is anyone else having issues like this with running  National Instruments hardware on Vista? 

In the meantime we're exercising our "Downgrade Rights" with Microsoft and installing Windows XP ourselves; though it's a lengthy proceedure that we'd like to avoid.

Thanks

Bryan

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

Not that I can answer you query, but when ordering most Dells, you still have a choice to have it loaded with XP or Vista. I just went to their site to verify this AM.

[CaptainBlight]

Yea, at first we didn't know we had that option according to their online ordering system, but after speaking with an account manager, we found we could get XP on our next order.  I have another question though I have uncovered regarding PCI cards.   Would the PCI-6509 DIO card (96 channels) work better for our application?  We basically need about 50 output channels and maybe 4 inputs at most.   The current PCI-DIO-96 cards are driving relay boards with banks of 5V mechanial relays on them.   Our current generation of software uses NIDAQmx drivers.

The other reason I question the PCI-DIO-96 vs the PCI-6509 is if the newer card would work any better under Vista being a slightly more modern design. 

[sead_suskic]

Bryan,

Can you provide the specific Dell model which show this  behavior? I'm interested in the mother-board chip-set.

Also, how are the Power Options configured? Does the system go to any power-saving mode after a period of time? I'm not sure if this would have anything to do with this, but it might be worth checking.

[CaptainBlight]

Yes, it is a very current model Dell Dimension E521, and I believe the chipset is the nForce 410 platform with the 6150 Integrated nVidia graphics.    The machines have 512meg RAM, AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 120 gig drives... all the rest is pretty standard fair.

All my power settings are disabled except for the monitor shut-off option which happens after a few hours.  The machine never goes to sleep or goes quiet (one of the functions of our software is to "stir the tanks" for XX period of time every YY hours, so the machine needs to be awake for that.)

[Matt_A]

Hello Brian,

One thing to keep in mind is that there are different system requirements for different versions of Windows Vista. If you look at the "Windows Vista recommended system requirements" page on the Microsoft website here, you will note that the Home Basic version only requires 512MB of system memory. However, the Home Premium, Business and Ultimate versions require 1GB of system memory. You noted that your computers only have 512MB of RAM. Do you know which version of Windows Vista is loaded on these computers?

[CaptainBlight]

Vista Business Basic x86.  RAM's not really the issue, after tearing out the GarbageWare that Dell loads on the machines (Roxio, Google Desktop, Corel, McAffee Trial Protect-against-anything Suite), they boot up and seem to run faster than my 2gig workstation.  I'm not storing anything to RAM or streaming in any kind of high-speed data.  Our application has a memory footprint when running of about 25meg. 

The scale connects via 9-pin serial port and streams in data at 9600baud.  I have the read buffer limited to 16k.  The outputs are just used to toggle on and off a bank of relays used to control the external system.  Two inputs are being used to register when limit switches are hit.  I'm using in our largest configuration, 38 outputs and 2 inputs on the DIO-96.

When I first posted this, I reset the card back to working order by completely removing all of the NIDAQmx 8.5 software and reinstalling it.  It once again, just died again today after the machine's 17th reboot after re-install.   Once again, Code 12 - Not enough resources...   just after I had gotten it to run perfectly for the last couple days.

[sead_suskic]

Bryan,

I know exactly how frustrating this is. I am not implying that I know what's going on with your systems, but I have encountered the same error with other plug-in hardware (NI and 3rd party). In my experience, this Device Manager symptom points to some hardware issue - with one particular piece or interaction between different sub-systems. This error really means that for some reason, Windows OS treats this device as not having been [completely] initialized by the BIOS. Again, I am not suggesting that this is what's happening here. Some of us are looking at this issue and o brainstorming on what could possibly cause this. In the meantime, can you please check the BIOS version on your Dell system, and if you are running the latest one. Just for the record, I am not suggesting that you blindly update the BIOS. I know what that means. Just having the information might illuminate more angles from which we can observe this problem.

Also, just for the record, this should not be happening.

[CaptainBlight]

This morning, I read on Dell's site about a BIOS issue with this model Dimension regarding Windows Vista.  BIOS version 1.1.4 had compatibility problems with Vista. 1.1.5 attempted to fix them, but had upgrade issues and was pulled off their site.  1.1.6 is apparently the latest version and is supposed to address all of this.   The Vista machine we have being tested is running 1.1.5.   On some of our newer machines we just got in, the 1.1.6 BIOS is present, but those machines are running Windows XP Pro. 

Unfortunately, Dell hasn't released the 1.1.6 BIOS to their website yet for me to give it a try.

I just have to thank you Sead for pondering over this problem.  It's frusterating because I don't know whether it's Dell's BIOS that's an issue not talking with the hardware properly and passing it on to the OS; or NI's driver not claiming and locking down the proper resources; or just Windows Vista being the glitchy new-release beast that it is.   The most frustering thing is that it works perfectly, then for no reason what-so-ever, the system decides days later "I don't have resources" and shuts it off.

The 1.1.5 and 1.1.6 BIOSes according to Dell's forums fix issues with USB devices, but there could be any number of unannounced minor bug fixes in it.    I'm going to re-set the card and once again log how long it takes and how many reboots it takes for Windows to decide it doesn't have the resources anymore to keep it happy. 

Thanks for all your help.
If you need any more information about the system, the program running on it, the hardware/software configuration, etc, I'll be happy to provide it.

-Bryan

[sead_suskic]

Bryan, I meant to mention another thing yesterday. I noticed that there is a chip set driver for nVIdia SMBus marked as urgent. Can you check if your system has this update?