PXI 8105 with Windows7

[Jesuisjenny]

Is PXI 8105 compatible with Windows 7? And also what will be the cause of hardware malfunction? Mine kept telling me hardware malfunction? It keep shutting down by itself.

[afrowizard]

Hello Jesusisjenny,

Hope you're having a great week.  When you install your own Operating System on one of our controllers, you also have to install the Peripherial Device Drivers.  These are the drivers that support the chipset of that particular controller and are needed to recognize your peripherial devices such as USB and PXI cards.  We have a compatibility chart that lists which OS's are compatible with our controllers, but the 8105 only lists Windows XP and Vista:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/E4503CC7E8BB41BA86256F7F006CBE8D

So it doesn't look like we officially support Windows 7 for this controller.  Your best option would be to move to a newer PXI controller such as the PXI-8101:

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/207072

or the PXI-8820:

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/211700

If these are beyond your budget and you are feeling ambitious, another option would be to install Windows 7 on you 8105 then try to use the Vista Peripherial Device Drivers for the 8105.  It may turn out that the drivers developed for Windows Vista work under 7, but NI doesn't guarantee the functionality and we wouldn't be able to offer you support for this configuration.  Another consideration is that the PXI-8105 is an older controller that may not have the best performance under Windows 7, especially with the standard 0.5 GB of RAM it came with.  Even if you get Windows 7 installed, the performance may be too slow to be acceptable.

Regards,

Mason

Applications Engineer

NI

[Jesuisjenny]

Thanks Mason, I have another question for you. Is that possible add momery on PXI 8105? My PI talked to Tech person, they said it is possible add more momery, but sale person said no. We are really frustrated at this point. And it still takes data, but it says we don't have enough momery, has some sort of momery error.

Thanks 

Jenny

[M.J]

Hi Jesuisjenny,

You should be able to manually upgrade the RAM by purchasing and upgrading the appropriate RAM module. You could remove the existing RAM module to verify what format it is and then purchase an upgrade. According to the manual of the NI 8105, the RAM module should be "SO-DIMM DDR2 SDRAM PC2 5300".

This process will require you to manually remove/ugrade the RAM. The below knowledge base article can walk you through that process:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/D1CE5AD24D3AD08B86256E93004C3E2F?OpenDocument

Hope this helps. 

[datnervt]

Hello,

I am also thinking about upgrading the PXI-8105 to Windows 7. Did you eventually succeed in upgrading the system? Or does anybody have any experience in upgrading a PXI system to an unsupported windows version?

Thanks for your help!

Flo

[Jesuisjenny]

I had no luck with it! Kept using the XP for now (unless more grants coming, I am living with it).  We add more RAM to maximize the machine; other than that nothing I can do. Good luck with your stuff.

Jenny

[datnervt]

Hey Jenny,

thanks for the info. I guess I will stick to Vista until the Microsoft support for Vista ends and then maybe NI will think about an update...

Cheers,

Flo

[janaf]

If it's not a critical mainframe, you can try to swap the disk (IDE interface, not SATA) and make a clean install. If it does not work, simply switch the old disk back.

I'm running Win-7 on an PXI-8102 without problems.

You may try resetting BIOS to defauts, it may help.

You can also update BIOS but a warning: the PXIe-8105  was also available as PXI-8105 (non-"e"). If you install the wrong BIOS, you are in trouble! The installer will happily install the wrong version but after that, there is no path back; you can't boot with the wrong BIOS, so you can not re-install the right one! Done it, been there  

The solution with the wrong  BIOS is to send it to NI for repair. Techniclly it shoud be possible to re-flash the BIOS straight to the IC.

(I was later informed that the 8105 was the last controller/BIOS update that did not warn when installing the wrong BIOS version, but don't take my word on that...)

I have a PXIe-8135 where the PXI Platform services did not identify the mainframe (PXIe-1062Q) and therefore no PXI modules. Updating the BIOS solved this. However, it may also simply be that udating the BIOS settings also re-set it to the defaults.   

[Clint1000]

If this post is still active:

Does anyone have a (NI)  part number for the PXIe-8101 with Windows 7 preloaded from National on it??  All I can find on website is Vista(?) and XP.

Thanks..

[James_Battleaxe]

Hi,

Unfortunately we do not sell the PXIe-8101 controller with Windows 7 preloaded. Vista and XP are the only 2 OS available for that controller.