PCMCIA cardbus driver not functioning

[In-Phase_Ed]

I am programming on a DELL Inspiron 9100 running WindowsXP.  Recently tried to use an old PCMCIA-GPIB card (the one with the large GPIB interface connector that attaches to the card).  My system (LabView 8.0) would not recognize the card.  After searching the NI site, I found that the latest driver for the PCMCIA-GPIB card was version 2.4, which  I downloaded and installed on my laptop.  The PCMCIA-GPIB card was not recognized and additionally, my PCMCIA cardbus driver now has a yellow exclamation mark indicating it is no longer functional.  I have attempted to restore my system to it's original setup prior to the installation of the 2.4 driver, but nothing appears to get me back to a functional PCMCIA cardbus driver (pcmcia.sys).  I have uninstalled all of my LabView 8.0 and then attempted to reinstall the entire LV 8.0 with the required drivers.  I get a message that a uninstall is still running.  It appears that something got left behind during the uninstall process that is having multiple effects on my laptop, with the most important one being that I can't use my PCMCIA slot anymore.  Any suggestions from the LabView community?

Ed

[Al M]

Ed,

Do you know the specific part number of your PCMCIA card?  Does the "uninstall" error message contain a number?  Could you post a screen shot of the error message?  Have you tried rebooting the machine to shut down the other uninstall process?  You could also try repairing the installation, then uninstalling everything.  Also, when you originally installed the device drivers was the device already inserted into the machine?  The proper process for installing NI hardware is:

Make sure no NI hardware is installed in machine

Install the appropriate software drivers for hardware

Shut down computer

Install hardware

Reboot computer

Allow Windows to auto detect the device

[In-Phase_Ed]

Hi Al,

Many thanks for the response.  I have been continuing to search all possible sources of information regarding my PCMCIA driver issue and just recently found one that contained the same information that you have provided regarding the order of installation of the s/w.  Unfortunately, I did do it the incorrect way and had the PCMCIA-GPIB card installed when I loaded the s/w.

I didn't record the error message during the installation of LV8.0, but I guess I could attempt to uninstall the GPIB drivers again and then attempt to reinstall them from the LV8.0 disc and see if the error message comes up again (of course the assumption here is that LV8.0 loaded the drivers to start with, I think there is a strong possiblility that it failed that portion of the install).  I'm rather surprised that the NI driver installation process has the ability to modify my cardbus driver (even considering the fact that I installed improperly).  I would expect that the improper installation would only result in the GPIB interface not being recognized and therefore wouldn't work.  Never expected it would "crash" my pcmcia.sys cardbus driver.

Am I right in assuming that something has been left behind from that corrupted GPIB driver installation that is interfering with my cardbus driver?  Jumping ahead and working with a possible "yes" to this question, what is the recommended process for getting the old GPIB installation "garbage" out of my machine so I can return my PCMCIA slot to functionallity again?  Are there any utilities that will go looking in all the possible locations for left over files (registry or otherwise) and permit me to remove them?

And yes, I've rebooted my laptop many, many times during this process of troubleshooting the PCMCIA cardbus driver issue.  I've uninstalled the cardbus driver and reinstalled many times with a reboot during every attempt and the driver always comes up with the yellow exclamation mark  and an error message that it couldn't load the driver properly.  There is another interesting side note to this cardbus driver situation and that is related to the fact that the cardbus driver now comes up and identifies my chipset as a Texas Instrument PCI-4450 when I know it was originally identified as a Texas Instrument PCI-4510.  I can go in manually and select the PCI-4510 driver, but I get a warning message that this is the wrong driver for my computer, and it may not be compatible!

I'm responding to your message from home and the PCMCIA-GPIB card is at work.  I'll get the pard number tomorrow and post it.

Still working the issue.....

Ed

[Al M]

Ed,

Having the hardware installed on your machine before installing the drivers could certainly have corrupted your installation.  The first thing I would like you to try is to get the other installer from running.  Go to the following link for information on how to do this:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/51B21E0B0ADF6C7386256C770058A80A?OpenDocument

Then uninstall everything National Instruments related and then reinstall your pcmcia bus driver.  If that doesn’t work I can show you how to make a clean wipe of anything NI related on your system.

Al M.

Applications Engineering

National Instruments

[In-Phase_Ed]

Hi Al,

> Go to the following link for information on how to do this:

>

> http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/51B21E0B0ADF6C7386256C770058A80A?OpenDocument

I went to the URL you supplied, but unfortunately all of the links on this page dealing with the Microsoft Installer must be quite old as they all are now broken.

I have gone the "uninstall everything associated with NI programs" and then attempt to reinstall my PCMCIA cardbus driver routine and that didn't work.  I was hoping that your supplied link might be the added step that would be required to make it all work.

Ed

[In-Phase_Ed]

Disregard my previous post about the links not working...a little searching on their site and I was able to find the new path to the original files.  Tnx

Ed

[In-Phase_Ed]

Al,

Installed the new Microsoft installer and all went well.  Uninstalled my PCMCIA cardbus driver and then reinstalled same.  It still comes up with the yellow exclamation mark and needless to say the error message indicates it could not load the driver (and I have rebooted).

Ed

[In-Phase_Ed]

Al,

I am now in the "very long" process of uninstalling everything associated with National Instruments from my laptop.  Due to the extreme length of time that this process takes for both the uninstall and reinstallation, perhaps if you read this post you might provide the information associated with your comment below, so I could implement it now while I have a "NI free" environment.....

> Then uninstall everything National Instruments related and then reinstall your pcmcia bus driver.

> If that doesn’t work I can show you how to make a clean wipe of anything NI related on your system.

Looking forward to your reply.

Ed

[Al M]

Ed,

I put a zip file on our ftp server at:

ftp://ftp.ni.com/outgoing/

The file is called Ed.zip.  The password is the same as the file name, minus the extension, and is case sensitive.  Please follow the readme located in the file as closely as you can.  Cheers.

Al M

Applications Engineering

National Instruments

[In-Phase_Ed]

The download went without problem.  WinZip shows me the files in the archive.  It accepts the password as you indicated.  I then get the following message:

Extracting to "C:\Temp\Software\PCMCIA-GPIB\NI support\"
Use Path: yes   Overlay Files: no
skipping: msiBlast.exe            unsupported compression method 99
skipping: msicu.exe               unsupported compression method 99
skipping: msicuu.exe              unsupported compression method 99
skipping: Uninstall NI Software.doc  unsupported compression method 99
error:  no files were found - nothing to do