PCI-6025 board repeatedly crashed Windows XP SP2 system

[tijae]

I am trying to install a PCI-6025 board into a system with the following HW configuration:

Asus A8N-SLI nForce4 Socket 939 Board

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Processor  (2.2 GH)

1GB DDR400 (2x512MB)

Dual 120GB SATA 7200RPM HD with 8MB Cache

MSI nVidia GeForce 6600GT PCI Express x16 Video Card

The systen is running Windows XP SP2 with all the most recent hotfixes and patches.  When we install the board the system bluescreens and the system becomes inoperable until we remove the board.  In one case the motherboard appears to have been fried.  Here is an excerpt from the Windows minidump:

----- 32 bit Kernel Mini Dump Analysis

DUMP_HEADER32:
MajorVersion        0000000f
MinorVersion        00000a28
DirectoryTableBase  00739000
PfnDataBase         810a6000
PsLoadedModuleList  805531a0
PsActiveProcessHead 80559258
MachineImageType    0000014c
NumberProcessors    00000001
BugCheckCode        0000009c
BugCheckParameter1  00000004
BugCheckParameter2  80545ff0
BugCheckParameter3  b2000000
BugCheckParameter4  00070f0f
PaeEnabled          00000001
KdDebuggerDataBlock 80544ce0
MiniDumpFields      00000dff

I have been unable to find any information anywhere regarding this particular problem.  Are there known issues with this board and 64-bit processors?  Thank you!

[Travis G.]

Hello Tijae,

As of now there are no known issues using National Instruments DAQ cards with AMD 64 bit processors.  The only caveat here is that the Windows XP 64 bit OS definately will not support our DAQ drivers.  All of our drivers, including the DAQ driver, are only tested and supported by the 32-bit version of Windows XP.  It looks like from the first line of your minidump that you are using the 32-bit version of Windows XP SP2, so that should be fine.

The behaviour you are seeing leads me to think that the problem exists between the PCI 6025E and the PCI bus on your ASUS motherboard.  There are a few things you can do to verify exactly what is causing the problem.

1.  Try to boot your computer into Safe Mode with the card installed, by holding F8 during the boot sequence.  This will bypass the loading sequence of device drivers and verify that the Windows is installed correctly.  This is by no means a solution to the problem, but would verify that your basic system components are functioning.

2.  Try moving the NI PCI 6025E card to different PCI slots on your motherboard.  This will allow you to determine if the problem is local to a certain PCI slot on your motherboard.

3.  Try another completely different type of PCI card in your motherboard, such as a network or sound card.  This will help determine if the problem is causes specifically by the DAQ card, or is common to all PCI devices.

4.  Check the overall power consumption of your system and ensure that your power supply is meeting your needs.  That 6600GT graphics card is pretty sweet, but its also a power hog.  Check the recommended power supply for that graphics card, and if your running dual cards in SLI mode, I would recommmend at least a 400W power supply.  The DAQ card is only going to draw around 5W of power, but it could be whats causing an already overtaxed power supply to crash your system.

5.  Make sure you are using the latest version of our DAQmx driver, DAQmx 8.0, which can be downloaded here. I don't see how this could be causing a BSOD, but its worth updating.  Make sure that you are logged in as the Administrator of your computer when performing all installations.

6.  The last thing I would recommend is to flash the BIOS on the motherboard with the latest update from ASUS.  Contact ASUS and get explicit directions for how to do this properly for your motherboard.

If none of this helps, I would recommend you directly contact a National Instruments Applications Engineer by calling 1-866-ASK-MYNI to get some further support.  It would also be helpful to have a record of the stop or error code associated with the BSOD.

Good luck,
Travis Gorkin
Applications Engineering
National Instruments
www.ni.com/support

[tijae]

Thanks for your help, Travis.  Unfortunately, I tried all the steps you listed an am still having the same issues.  I have since opened a support request with NI.  Thanks, again!

-TJ

1.  Try to boot your computer into Safe Mode with the card installed, by holding F8 during the boot sequence.  This will bypass the loading sequence of device drivers and verify that the Windows is installed correctly.  This is by no means a solution to the problem, but would verify that your basic system components are functioning.

No problems booting, it's only when we try to do a DMA transfer that we run into problems.

2.  Try moving the NI PCI 6025E card to different PCI slots on your motherboard.  This will allow you to determine if the problem is local to a certain PCI slot on your motherboard.

We've tried it on 3 different Asus motherboards, in different slots; same problem.

3.  Try another completely different type of PCI card in your motherboard, such as a network or sound card.  This will help determine if the problem is causes specifically by the DAQ card, or is common to all PCI devices.

Again -- only happens when we do a DMA transfer to/from the card

4.  Check the overall power consumption of your system and ensure that your power supply is meeting your needs.  That 6600GT graphics card is pretty sweet, but its also a power hog.  Check the recommended power supply for that graphics card, and if your running dual cards in SLI mode, I would recommmend at least a 400W power supply.  The DAQ card is only going to draw around 5W of power, but it could be whats causing an already overtaxed power supply to crash your system.

Tried it with more or fewer cards in the system.  Presumably, it wouldn't be tied to communications with the card.

5.  Make sure you are using the latest version of our DAQmx driver, DAQmx 8.0, which can be downloaded here. I don't see how this could be causing a BSOD, but its worth updating.  Make sure that you are logged in as the Administrator of your computer when performing all installations.

Reproed with both NI-DAQmx 7.5 and 8.0

6.  The last thing I would recommend is to flash the BIOS on the motherboard with the latest update from ASUS.  Contact ASUS and get explicit directions for how to do this properly for your motherboard.

Done.

Here's the repro steps:

Install NI-DAQmx 8.0, restart, & shut down

Install the PCI-6025E into the Asus MB and power up

Complete the installation and start NI Measurement and Automation Explorer

Go to the device in the tree: My System/Devices and Interfaces/NI-DAQnx devices/PCI-6025E

Select the device and bring up the test panels

In the analog input tab, set the Mode to Continuous

Click Start

===>  Get MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION