Adding simulated DMM to NI MAX gives "Status Code: -201166 Firmware for this device is corrupt. "

[JonP]

I am trying to add a simulated NI PXI-9072 DMM to NI MAX. After it is added I see this error and no other operations work (see screen snip below)

Status Code: -201166
Firmware for this device is corrupt. Contact National Instruments for help with this device.

It works fine for PXI DAQ devices and scopes.

How can firmware be corrupt for a simulated device??? Anyone know how to fix this error? I have repaired NI-DMM but no joy.

NI-MAX 21.0

NI-DMM 19.5

[kirsch]

That certainly looks like a bug.

My first advice is to upgrade to the latest NI-DMM 2023 Q4. If the issue persists then we'll have to find a way to reproduce the issue at NI so we can look into it.

[JonP]

Thanks, Marcos, but I have to stick with NI DMM version 19.5 because that is what has been shipped to customers. Well, I suppose I could temporarily upgrade it just to see if that works, but I don't particularly want to do that and then go back to 19.5, NI DMM installation takes ages!

I suspect there is some kind of software configuration problem because a) other people in the company who are working with the same software revs do not see this problem and b) I'm fairly sure it did work for me one time. Is it possible I have removed some required sub-package, or disabled a service, or something like that which DMM simulation relies on?

It's possible I had an earlier version of MAX when it was working, could that be the problem?

Jon

[kirsch]

It is unlikely to be a problem with the MAX version.

Try to reset your system's configuration data. In MAX go to Tools » Reset Configuration Data.

[JonP]

Good try but it doesn't help. Note that USB and PCI DMMs also fail with this error.

A colleague who has a successful DMM simulated is using MAX 2022, Q3 release, so I will try that next, although I agree it is unlikely to help 😞

[kirsch]

Ok please post back.

NI-DMM for 407x driver uses the DAQmx framework for a lot of the driver functionality including the creation of simulated devices. You should compare the versions for NI software beyond MAX and NI-DMM between your system and systems that are functioning normally.

[JonP]

BTW thank you very much for helping me out with this.

As you expected, going to MAX 2022 does not help.

Comparing software versions with a working system, the only things I see are:

1. NI-DMM (19.5.0) sub-package versions are the same except that my installation is missing "Support for C" and "Support for LabWindows/CVI".
2. DAQmx (19.6.0) sub-package versions are the same except that my version of "cDAQ Firmware" is 20.7.0 and the good system is 19.6.0. Also my system is missing the "Support for C" and "Support for CVI" sub-packages. Finally I have additional sub-packages "Support for LabVIEW Real-Time and LabWindows/CVI Real-Time" and "Support for Visual Studio 2019".

[kirsch]

Ok... nothing obvious there.

Does non-simulated 407x hardware work normally on this system?

[JonP]

This is a laptop system used for software development and does not have any instrumentation attached. Hence the usefulness of simulated DMMs, Daqs and DSOs!

[kirsch · Accepted solution]

The error code you are getting is produced when the PXI-4072 driver attempts to load the main firmware image from disk onto the device (these DMMs have an onboard DSP whose firmware is shipped with and loaded by the driver).

It might be confusing to you that this happens in simulation, but we actually run as much of the real driver code in simulation in order to get a behavior as similar as reasonable to the driver running on the real hardware. The error is returned if:

1. the file cannot be opened (probably because it's missing)
2. the file is corrupt
3. the file's version is unexpected

It must be an issue with your installation, either because someone tampered with files they shouldn't have or due to a bug in the installer. The file that the driver looks for is "PXI4072acq_code.cfg" and is somewhere under "C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments" (I don't have a system readily available to check). You can compare with one of the other systems.

Repairing or reinstalling the driver should fix it.

Please see if the file is missing or what, and report back. Thanks!