I cannot access my multi-function DAQ hardware from VB/Meas Studio after upgrading to latest Meas Studio Version and NI-DAQmx

Question

I have a farily complex project that was initially written in VB6.0 with Meas Studio 3.0 and using traditional NiDAQ.  For seveal reasons, I wanted to upgrade to the latest NI software.  So, I purchased the latest version of Meas. Studio.  I installed this, along with NI-DAQmx.  Now, I cannot access any of the hardware from the VB IDE / Meas. Studio DAQ objects.  Nor can I get the installed examples to run.  The test panels run ok from MAX. 
The whole process of trying to do this upgrade process has been extremely confusing and frustrating.  I have a support request in, but have yet to hear from anyone.  Trying to get useful information on this problem from the NI web site has also been difficult since almost all of the support doucments of any detail reference Labview.
Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

I'd like to better explain the decision not to provide ActiveX controls for DAQmx. My intention is not to de-legitimize your concern or downplay the pain/inconvenience this caused you.
The decision not to provide ActiveX controls would be more accurately summarized as a cost/benefit decision.
DAQmx is an entirely different API. The choice not to support mx with ActiveX controls was not a matter of dropping support from an implementation perspective (I understand that from a product-offering perspective, it is dropping support). Rather, the choice not to support mx with ActiveX controls was a matter of not designing and implementing an entire new set of controls.
Given our resources, we have to make choices about what languages (C#, VB.NET, C++, VB6), frameworks and versions (.NET 1.1, .NET 2.0, ASP.NET, MFC 7.1, MFC 8.0, VB6), and development environments (VB6, VC6, VS2003, VS2005) that we support. When NI decided that mx was necessary (that is, we could not move forward with new hardware under the old Traditional DAQ API), the Measurement Studio team had to decide which of these languages/platforms/ADEs to support.
We view the ActiveX controls as native support for Visual Basic 6.0. In March of 2008, Microsoft is going to stop supporting Visual Basic 6.0 (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbrun/ms788707.aspx). It was largely because of this that we did not feel that our customers, as a whole, would gain enough benefit from us developing ActiveX controls to justify the cost. Instead, we developed native .NET and C++/MFC libraries for DAQmx.
We developed the type library for mx because we did understand that some customers would want or need to use mx boards in existing VB6 systems. While this is not an ideal solution, we hoped that it would be good enough. I am sorry that it doesn't meet your needs.
Looking back, we see that our customer base has not moved away from VB6 and to VB.NET or C# as quickly as we thought they would. This is why the Measurement Studio product continues to include VB6 support (the UI and Analysis ActiveX controls that you mention) and why we continue to fix bugs in these components. However, we are not putting much effort into developing new features in these ActiveX controls. Almost all of our new feature development efforts are in the .NET libraries.