Why does Step Fail cause a Lost ActiveX Connection Runtime Error?

Question

A Step failure is a legitimate event. It should be recorded and execution should pass to the next step or cleanup as set up in the sequence or Station config. But I get this 17702 runtime error popup everytime. The steps are setup as single threads, dynamically loaded and unloaded.

Answer 1

Hello Bob,
Error -17702 is a CVI OLE (ActiveX) adapter error. This scenario that I'm familiar with is the following steps:
1) TestStand's CVI adapter is configured to "Execute Steps in an External Instance of CVI".
2) From TestStand, step into a CVI code module.
3) While inside the code module in CVI, click the "Stop" button. This stops the CVI debugger, and TestStand interprets this as error -17702. Here's the error message you see:
Error Message: Lost ActiveX connection to CVI. The CVI adapter will attempt to reconnect on next execution. [Error Code: -17702]
Note that if this scenario occurs, ALL CVI steps after this in the sequence will be marked with this same error number.
In the scenario I just described, the step is listed by TestStand wi
th a status of "Error", not "Failed".
Are your steps being marked with a status of "Error" or "Failed"? If they are listed as "Error", then an unrecoverable error (which kills the CVI debugger) is what has happened, and that needs to be corrected.
For instance, in the scenario I described above, the correction is to NOT click the "Stop" button; always let the CVI debugger execute through the code.
However, if your steps being marked with a status of "Failed", then perhaps something else is going wrong. I would first repair the installation of TestStand and CVI on your computer to see if that fixes the problem.
David Mc.
NI Applications Engineer