Driver Problem with PCI 232/16

[testproggie]

I had a hard drive failure on a machine that communicates with several robots using RS232 and have the old PCI 232/16 186492B-01 board that I am trying to get to work. This isn't the newer PCI-8430/16. It worked previously under Windows 7, but now I cannot for the life of me find the windows drivers. This machine is before my time here at the company so I don't have particulars on the old setup. Same computer though with a new drive, new install of Win 7 and LabVIEW 2016. I am sure the previous version of LabVIEW was 2014. The only path I seem to find is to intall NI-Serial XX. I have installed NI-Serial 15.0, but is this perhaps missing the proper driver for the PCI 232/16? Note that the listing on the webpage for NI-Serial 15.0 does list the PCI 232/16 in the device list. Perhaps I am not doing something properly to get the windows driver for this device? The other option is to replace the board with an external USB multi serial port adapter - there is another similar setup that went that route and I know I can get that to work. 

[Gloorious_Leader]

Hi testproggie,

Is the PCI-232 accessible in MAX? If it is, then you have the necessary drivers installed.

When you say you can't find the WIndows Drivers, do you mean that you can't find the driver palette in LabVIEW? The NI-Serial driver is the correct driver for this device, but it doesn't install support for the LabVIEW 2016 Development Environment. I believe you can install NI-VISA 16.0 to get support for LabVIEW 2016.

[testproggie]

MAX and Windows identify it as a "PCI Simple Communications Controller" and both complain there are no Windows drivers installed. Using windows updates doesn't find anything (expected), but I can't figure out what to install besides the NI Serial file I already tried.

[Gloorious_Leader · Accepted solution]

Make sure that the device is associated with the NI-Serial driver in Windows' Device Manager. The Driver tab in the Properties window should list National Instruments as the Driver Provider.

If it doesn't, you'll need to update the driver manually. The driver should be located at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\NiSerU.sys

If this still doesn't work, you might want to try the device in a different PCI slot.

[testproggie]

The file NISerU.sys was not there. Well, now what? I went back to my drivers DVDs and started that install again. Noticing that NI VISA 15.0 is not installed by default, I turned it on and did the default install plus the NI VISA and IT WORKED. The separate download of NI VISA 15 and install for whatever reason didn't do the trick. Thanks for the guidance that got me to where I needed to go!

Robert