PCI-7344 not found in MAX 3.1.1 after installing NI-Motion 7.0

Question

Hi,
I updated my PCI-7344 + LabView 7.0 system with the newest NI-Motion 7.0. After the update the card was not anymore detected in MAX. There was a "broken" device PCI-7344 under NI Motion Devices, which status said something like "This device has been removed or could not be detected" and the Reset command said something like "Could not communicate with the device. Power cycle the computer..". I removed the device from the "Devices and interfaces" list and since that, MAX hasn't had a clue about the card. I've tried the "Create new.." function, but it doesn't show any NI Motion Devices or PCI-7344 anywhere else. I've also tried the Tools/Install legacy driver support, but MAX only notifies that the updates are OK. I've also tried removing the physical device, starting the computer and MAX, reinstalling the device and restarting MAX, but nothing changes. The device is recognised by BIOS as "Unknown device"; in Windows 2000 Pro, the device is well recognised as National Instruments PCI-7344.
One thing that could cause the problem is that I also have LabView 6i installed on the system, although I'm not currently using it for any purpose. Anyway, this seems to prevent the MAX from detecting the correct updates needed when using the "National Instruments Product Updates.." from Tools menu. Perhaps I need some driver software to correct this problem?
I also tried to uninstall the NI-Motion 7.0 and to install the NI-Motion 6.1.5, but after this, the MAX did not work correctly. For example, none of the branches in the configuration tree would expand and the MAX locked up when trying to use the Create New.. / NI Motion Device. Is there a way to uninstall the NI-Motion 7.0 and to replace it with NI-Motion 6.1.5 without removing all NI software from the system?
Before the update, with NI-Motion 6.1.5, the PCI-7344 card was correctly found in MAX and well usable in LabView 7.0.

Answer 1

Jouni,
A valid serial number is any number > 0. If you have multiple boards in you system, they must each have a unique serial number. This would be the case for any board coming out of manufacturing. The board Jochen had probably came from R&D and was a prototype board.
Your problem with downgrading from NI-Motion 7.0 to NI-Motion 6.1.5 was most likely due to the data stored in the MAX database. When you uninstall NI-Motion, the data in the MAX database remains. The NI-Motion 6.1.5 driver would not have been able to read the data correctly. The easiest way to "clear" this database is to delete the c:\Program Files\National Instruments\MAX\data folder. The only other way is to uninstall MAX, which requires that you uninstall everything. WARNING, Deleting the MAX data folder will delete all MAX settings and set them back to defaults for all NI hardware (uninstalling everything has this same affect, by the way). Downgrading is never as clean as upgrading.
The firmware on a Motion board can always be downgraded by forcing the download of firmware files. To do this, select the board in MAX under Devices and Interfaces. Click on the Firmware tab at the bottom on the window. Highlight "PCI-73XX Firmware" by clicking on it once. Right click on one of the items in the "Firmware name" column to the right. Select "Download All Files".
I do not have a good explaination for why NI-Motion 7.0 did not recognize your board. Do you have a second board you can try in the system? If not, could you ask your local sales representative if they have one you borrow for a quick test? Since the board is recognized by Windows 2000 Device Manager, I don't think there is an issue with the board, but it doesn't hurt verify this.
My best guess is that there was a confict during the installation process and your system did not get all of the required files. Though we do significant installer testing, there are rare occasions when a system is in such a state that the installation process does not function as expected. It is my experience that these rare instances do not occur on clean machines, but on machines that have had multiple products installed and uninstalled. If you do get a chance to try NI-Motion 7.0 again you may want to use these parameters to get the installer to create a log of the installation: "c:\setup.exe l*v c:\log.txt". This assumes that the setup.exe is in the c:\ directory. Go to start>>run and type this in without the quotes. The log file will be named log.txt in the c:\ directory.
Finally, you can technically use NI-Motion 7.0 in LabVIEW 6. You just need to copy the C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW 7.0\vi.lib\Motion folder to the vi.lib folder of LabVIEW 6. Though this is not officially supported, there is no reason it shouldn't work.
Regards,