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Intermittent application hang when using DAQ assistant

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I'm using a NI USB-6008 with NI-DAQmx 9.3 drivers on Windows 7. My application occasionally hangs (~1/200 times) when I try to set a digital output with the DAQ assistant block.

 

The block has the default timeout. There's a blinking indicator on the front panel that continues to blink, and my system remains responsive (I can click buttons, move around windows, and so on), but the LabVIEW app simply appears to be waiting on the DAQ assistant block. Task manager shows the CPU is basically idle.

 

Furthermore, clicking the "X" close button on the LabVIEW app window does nothing, and when I try to reboot Windows from the start menu, it hangs forever on the "waiting to shutdown" screen. The LabVIEW app operates normally again after a hard reboot.

 

Any ideas why this is happening? Could this potentially be a driver problem? The PC was cloned using an image from a PC where the same LabVIEW app has been running fine for many 1000's of cycles. The cloned PC with identical hardware hangs every few hundred cycles.

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Hi mtmike,

 

My first suggestion would be to repair your DAQ software on the cloned computer. You can do this by going to add remove programs>National Instruments>NI-DAQmx and then selecting Repair. Let me know if this helps.

 

Regards,

 

Josh Brown

Applications Engineer
National Instruments
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Josh,

 

I have what seems like a similar problem with intermittent loss of program control with a compiled executable and a USB-9006.  The program seems to get hung in a subVI and after between ~5 sec and 40 sec starts operating normally again.  The main loop is not executing during these periods.  The same executable running on the development PC does not exhibit these problems.

 

Following your advice I repaired the NI DAQmx install on the target machine, which appeared to fix the problem.  However, when I updated the application executable on the target, this problem re-occurred.  Repairing NI DAQmx seems to have fixed the problem again.  This leads me to believe that the problem has to do with the installer.  Any suggestions on what to do next? 

 

I have deployed a different executable (also using a USB-6009) to a different target machine without issues.

 

Thanks,

Pete

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Pete, 

 

Try repairing the NI DAQmc driver on the machine on which you are creating the application. Then, rebuild your .exe and see if that works!

 

Katie

Katie Collette
National Instruments
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Hi Josh,


Thanks for the suggestion. We tried completely uninstalling the DAQ driver and associated programs, then reinstalling. But the app continues to hang intermittently. It's also started happening on the original PC, so I'm not sure if it's a cloning issue.

 

We've also found that after the LabVIEW app hangs, unplugging the DAQ and then plugging it in again makes it possible to restart the app, which runs normally again after that.

 

Is there anything else we can try?

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Accepted by topic author mtmike

Hey mtmike,

 

When you uninstalled and reinstalled the DAQmx drivers, did you install the newest ones (9.4) or just version 9.3 again? You could try uninstalling the driver and putting the new ones on your computer. You can find the new drivers here. Are you running an executable or just running it from LabVIEW? You could try uninstalling and reinstalling the LabVIEW runtime engine if its an executable. Have you tried it in different USB slots?

 

Also, have you tried using the DAQmx vi's in your program instead of using the DAQ Assistant? If you haven't seen these, you can check them out by going to Help--> Find Examples. Then you can go to Harware Input and Output, then DAQmx. There are a lot of examples there that use the DAQmx VI's instead of the DAQ Assistant.

 

Hope this helps some! 

 

Joe S

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

 

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Hi Joe,

 

Thanks for the quick response. It think we've found the issue - the DAQ was plugged into a different USB port on the cloned PC's. Perhaps that caused problems with the driver or it was putting too much traffic on that internal USB hub.

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Katie,

 

I tried your suggestion of repairing DAQmx on the development machine as well as the target, re-built the exe and the installer and re-installed on the target.  The frequency of hangs is reduced, but they still occur at apparently random intervals.

 

I have NI-DAQmx 9.2.2 on both development and target PCs.

 

Pete

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Hi Pete,

 

You mentioned you successfully deployed another executable that uses the USB 6009. What is the primary difference between the two executables and the machines you are deploying them on?

 

Regards,

 

Josh Brown

 

Applications Engineer
National Instruments
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Josh,

 

Here are the specs on the three PCs.  All are running Win XP Pro v2002 SP3 and built-in USB.

Development PC

Dell Precision M6400

Core 2 Duo T9600 @ 2.8GHz

2.79GHz 3.48GB RAM

 

Target PC 1 (does not exhibit intermittent behavior)

Dell Precision T3400

Q6600 @ 2.4GHz

2.39GHz 3.25GB RAM

 

Target PC 2 (exhibits intermittent program hanging)

Dell Optiplex 320

Pentium4 @ 3.2GHz

3.20GHz 1.96GB RAM

 

Target PC 1 is in an active production cell so I can't install the misbehaving app there.  I am looking into whether I can borrow another PC to see if this problem replicates.

 

Pete

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