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NI-488.2 does work on Windows XP Mode within Windows 7

I am using the HPIB-USB device with NI-488.2 v2.7.2 drivers on Windows 7.  This works properly in Windows 7, but does not work in the Windows XP Mode (VM) within Windows 7.  In XP Mode, the device is detected and the drivers are found, but a message indicates that the drivers did not install properly.  The M&A Explorer app does not see any GPIB devices.

 

What can I do to get the NI-488.2 drivers to install properly under XP Mode in W7?

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Hello,

 

Is there a particular reason you want to use this driver in Windows XP Mode, since it seems to be working fine in Windows 7? I was looking over this article, and saw that your CPU requires Virtualization support in order to use WinXP Mode, so you may want to doublecheck this. This article also says that this mode is disabled by default on some machines, so you may also want to jump into your BIOS and see if there are any settings you need to enable to get this working.

Justin E
National Instruments R&D
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I don't see any replies yet to this thread that would indicate this is supported.  Has anyone successfully accessed a GPIB interface from inside XP Mode in Windows 7?  I am trying to use a PCI-GPIB card in XP Mode.  Installed the latest NI-488.2 2.7.1 in the XP Mode Virtual PC (reboot of course), run MAX and no GPIB interfaces are detected.  Running MAX directly from Windows 7 works fine (I can see the PCI-GPIB and communicate with my instrument), so I know the HW is ok.

 

Justin asked why do this?  Well the same reason anyone else needs XP mode- we are running some software that is not Windows 7 compatible and uses the NI-GPIB interface.  Getting it to work in XP Mode on a Windows 7 box would allow us to upgrade to some newer PCs and run this test setup.

 

If someone has gotten this to work, could you reply with any additional steps that were performed, and perhaps describe your PC configuration (processor, etc.)?

 

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The NI-488.2 driver is not currently tested in virtualized environments, such as Windows XP Mode, VirtualPC, VmWare, Parallels Desktop, VirtualBox, etc...

 

That said, I do know of users who have successfully used GPIB-USB-HS hardware in VmWare and Parallels Desktop. This does not constitute any guarantee that it is fully functional, only that it worked for their purposes. I have not heard until now of anybody trying it with VirtualPC, because USB support only appears to available in Windows XP Mode, and not with VirtualPC 2007 which is available for XP and Vista. 

 

As far as PCI, none of these environments are capable of exposing PCI hardware to the virtual machine, so using a PCI-GPIB in XP Mode will not be possible. 

 

The only "universal" interface which I would expect to be fully functional in all these environments is the GPIB-ENET/100. While this is also not specifically tested with virtualization, it does not rely on any direct physical connection to the hardware, and I would expect all of these environments to have good networking support.

 

-Jason S. 

 

 

Message Edited by JasonS on 12-16-2009 11:23 PM
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Thanks for the info. Jason.

 

Since we also have a GPIB-USB-HS, I thought I'd post a summary of results for the 2 interfaces I have tested in XP Mode under W7:

 

1. PCI-GPIB:  does not show in Device Manager or in MAX.  This is in line with Jason's comments.

 

2. GPIB-USB-HS:  does show in Device Manager after attaching the device from the Virtual PC USB menu.  This envokes the Found New HW prompt and the GPIB-USB-HS is listed in Dev Mgr under National Instruments GPIB Interaces.  But- the yellow ! mark is present, and the device status displays "This device cannot start (Code 10)".  Interestingly, when you click the Troubleshoot button and Run Selected Tests on the device, the result is Pass and the message below says "NI-488.2 is ready to use".  But this does not appear to be a true statement.  The drivers have not installed correctly, and the device does not apeear in MAX.

 

Unfortunately we don't have GPIB-ENET/100 here to test- according to Jason this may be the only current working option for this environment.  Would someone at NI (or elsewhere) be willing to test this setup and post results back here?  If I'm going to convince my customers to spend twice as much for this option vs. USB or PCI, it would be nice to know ahead of time if it will work.

 

And it would be even nicer if NI could investigate the issues that are keeping the GPIB-USB from working in XP Mode.  It seems like it is close to functioning (passes the troubleshooting tests), but not quite there.

 

Regards,

 

Eric Behrs

Behrs Engineering Solutions

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Hi Eric,

 

I was able to get my hands on a GPIB-ENET/100 and windows 7 test machine with XP mode installed. We had it connected to a test instrument and we were able to send a *IDN? Command and read the response from the instrument. Obviously this doesn't constitute full compatibility testing but it does seem like it should work.

 

We ran into the same problem using a USB device, looking at Microsoft web site it says that not all classes of USB devices will work in XP mode, so unfortunately this may just be a limitation of XP mode.

 

Let us know if you have any further questions.

 

Thanks

Applications Engineer
National Instruments
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Eric Behrs wrote:

2. GPIB-USB-HS:  does show in Device Manager after attaching the device from the Virtual PC USB menu.  This envokes the Found New HW prompt and the GPIB-USB-HS is listed in Dev Mgr under National Instruments GPIB Interaces.  But- the yellow ! mark is present, and the device status displays "This device cannot start (Code 10)".  Interestingly, when you click the Troubleshoot button and Run Selected Tests on the device, the result is Pass and the message below says "NI-488.2 is ready to use".  But this does not appear to be a true statement.  The drivers have not installed correctly, and the device does not apeear in MAX.


 At first I was thrown off by the statement that the troubleshooting wizard passed, but after I spent some time to see what was happening I understand why it looks that way. When the troubleshooting wizard appears, normally is lists a line for testing the software installation, and a separate line for each GPIB interface installed. In your case you are seeing that the software installation test has passed, but since the hardware was not successfully installed it did not appear on the list.
I did some digging into what is happening when you receive the error code 10, and it appears that the USB stack in Windows XP Mode is returning an error when we attempt to initialize the device. As I mentioned before, we do not specifically test our driver in virtualized environments, but this is not something that has been reported or that we have previously encountered with any other virtualization software.
To confirm this issue doesn't exist with all virtualization platforms in Windows 7, I installed two GPIB-USB-HS interfaces into a Windows XP virtual machine in VmWare, with Windows 7 64-bit as the host OS. I ran a significant portion of our tests with them, and did not encounter any problems other than reduced benchmark throughput, which is understandable given that it has to go through the virtualization layer.
I must say that this does not change our current stance that we do not perform official testing nor guarantee behavior in virtual machines. The best NI supported solution would be to run your application natively in Windows 7. If that is not an option, I would recommend that you look into running an XP virtual machine in something other than the XP Mode that is available with Windows 7, to see if it works for you.
-Jason S.

 

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Scott,

 

I too am trying to make GPIB-US-HS to work under Virtual XP mode under WIN7 pro, but to no avail.  The M&A does not even recognize it (used NI 2.5 version).  Our company needs to explore using Windows 7 as we have been using like others in the business WinXP for the last decade.  Migrating to WIN7 via XP mode would ease the transition.  It would be in National Instrument's best interest to make this possible.  Many of our software products depend on legacy software.

 

 

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Hello John,

 

We have not tested our device to work on a virtual machine. It does appear they do work when using VMWare but they are still not supported. Also it looks like it is a limitation of Windows XP Mode that is not allowing the device to be installed correctly.

 

Best Regards,

 

Adam G 

National Instruments
Applications Engineer
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@JohnPM wrote:

Scott,

 

I too am trying to make GPIB-US-HS to work under Virtual XP mode under WIN7 pro, but to no avail.  The M&A does not even recognize it (used NI 2.5 version).  Our company needs to explore using Windows 7 as we have been using like others in the business WinXP for the last decade.  Migrating to WIN7 via XP mode would ease the transition.  It would be in National Instrument's best interest to make this possible.  Many of our software products depend on legacy software.



John,
What type of Legacy software are you using that will not run in Windows 7? Are these DOS or Win16 apps, or are they Win32 applications? I have been able to use nearly all of my existing software without problems.

   -Jason S.

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