USB-6009 OEM Firmware Update Question + OEM Drivers Workaround

[Board34]

Hello Everyone,

We are replacing a large number of NI USB-6009 OEM interfaces from our devices and retiring/repurposing them.  As we test the boards after removal, our test systems recognize them right away in MAX but only as USB devices called "NI USB-6009 OEM FW" with a usb symbol next to it.  (I don't want to muddy the waters but this occurs only on some machines.  Others do install them properly right away as an accessible "USB-6009 Dev1" device.)

As I've seen that other people have had similar problems to this with their OEMs on this forum - I'll relate that we have figured out a way to work around this using Device Manager in Windows 7, manually changing the device driver to that of a USB-6009 in the general list of drivers (under the "Choose Driver Myself" option.  As soon as that happens, MAX picks it up, installs it, and is ready to roll except that the Self Test returns an error of -200020.  Other than the error and an error warning message when entering the Test Panel, the boards work fine.

So to my question -- due to the fact that machines with the latest DAQmx and DAQmx Base installs sometimes don't see these properly, I have a hunch that these were installed with a custom firmware by NI for our proprietary devices.  Is it possible that the firmware installed on these is getting in the way of both Windows and MAX from seeing properly that this is a USB-6009 OEM?  I've tried the mx/Base firmware switching KB, the 6008/6009 Firmware Update video, and any others I could find but none of the procedures or Firmware Updaters have worked with these boards.   I'd like to make these boards instantly install in MAX as an accessible and error 200020-free 'USB-6009 OEM Dev1' and it seems like returning them to original firmware may be the ticket.

Any help would be greatly appreciated; I apologize if any of this has been incomprehensible.  If not being recognized by MAX is just the name of the game for USB-6009 OEMs, that's fine just let me know.  The best solution would be a way to return each of these to factory settings so MAX recognizes them properly right away and without errors on every computer.  Sorry for the long post and thanks again!

[SnowMule]

Every time you connect a unique VID/PID/Serial to the computer, a new registry entry is created for the device.  Drivers are associated and the device is "cached" so it doesn't have to reinstall every time.

For home applications where you've only got a few devices, the convenience of plugging it in the first time and having drivers install then the device just working every time after that is why Microsoft does things that way.

In manufacturing applications, where you've got thousands of unique VID/PID/SN devices going across the machine, the registry and device manager eventually bloats up with these cached devices.  Once devmon's "full", things start misbehaving.

My suggestion is to grab a copy of Device Remover and use it to remove most "hidden/detached" devices.  My bet is your machine's got a bunch of 600x, "USB Firmware Loader", etc in there that just needs to be flushed out.

Disconnect your devices, blow those away, reboot the machine, then plug the device in and let windows reinstall the drivers.

I have to do the same for a product we have using HID drivers.  Removing unused items under "Ports" will let you reclaim old COM port numbers too.

[bdwhaley]

I think your suggestion is not related to the problem,  it happens to a Windows 7 computer that has never had a USB 6009 OEM plugged into it, so there would be no registry entries yet. 

[constellationlabs]

Having the same problem on Windows 8.  Thanks for your suggestion to manually install the driver.  I get Error -200020 "Self test of the device has failed" but other than that, the device seems to work just fine.

[nizartunisia]

Goooood job