I do not know why this message appears. It is misleading, at best, and NI Support knows this! Maybe it is the "If we can't match up with another Error Message, use the first (or last?) one on the list" situation. A better one would be "We have no idea why this failed -- please call NI Technical Support and submit a Ticket".
I've been getting these since NIPM was first released. The "fix" never had anything to do with the Internet.
One thing to try -- when running NIPM, do "one thing at a time", i.e. only LabVIEW (no Drivers, almost no "Add ons", reboot, one Module (still no Drivers), Drivers last.
Bob Schor