VBAI crashes when using NiViAsrl.dll

[lcady]

I hope this isn't too much of a noob question...

  Suddenly last week, without any warning, VBAI would no longer start.  All my versions of VBAI had the same failure.  When launched the splash screen would declare "Initializing Plug-ins: nnnnnnn"  then "Validating Plug-ins" ... and that was it.  It would just sit there, spinning my mouse pointer until a message box proclaimed "NI Vision Builder nnnn has stopped working".  The poor thing never got past the splash screen.  It did not matter what version I ran.  I tried 3.6, 2009 SP1, 2010, and 2011 SP1, all had the same symptom.  I un-installed them.  I re-installed them.  Same problem.

  In the Windows control panel I checked the event viewer, looking for more insight on the error.  Here is a list of errors that occurred within 10 seconds of the crash:

Events:

E1) LabVIEW information:     Error: 404 "Not Found" for "/national instruments/vision/vision builder ai/4.2.0/", file "c:/program files (x86)/national instruments/shared/ni webserver/www/national instruments/vision/vision builder ai/4.2.0/": Can't access URL

E2) LabVIEW information:     Error: 404 "Not Found" for "/national instruments/vision/vision builder ai/commserver", file "c:/program files (x86)/national instruments/shared/ni webserver/www/national instruments/vision/vision builder ai/commserver": Can't access URL

E3) Vision Builder.exe    4.2.0.0    4d2fa0d5    NiViAsrl.dll    5.0.0.49152    4c23895a    c0000005    0000ac83    2394    01cd5ae877235c04    C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\Vision Builder AI 2011\Vision Builder.exe    C:\Program Files (x86)\IVI Foundation\VISA\WinNT\Bin\NiViAsrl.dll    be9fb414-c6db-11e1-82af-0024e8840468      

-- Events 1 & 2 above occurred because there is no directory ".../www/national instruments/vision/vision builder ai/4.2.0/" 

-- Event 3 is a mystery to me.  The file is there, it is 79KB, and was created 6/24/2010, but I don't know what it does.

Questions:

Q1)  How do I get / install the directory and all the files that go into: "c:/program files (x86)/national instruments/shared/ni webserver/www/national instruments/vision/ bla bla bla bla bla  ?

Q2) Do I need the afore mentioned files?

Q3) What is "NiViAsrl.dll"?

Q4) How do I go about re-installing "NiViAsrl.dll"?

Thanks and admiration:

T1) Thank you in advance for assisting me with this pressing issue.

T2) My response will be delayed until sometime Friday morning.

T3) Your knowledge on such matters as these are worthy of great praise.

[Brad]

Q1-2) I wouldn't worry too much about the 404 errors. Those can occur when the service hasn't started and if VBAI is getting hung before it can start those services, that's expected, so nothing to install to the directories the error mentions.

Q3-Q4) The NiViAsrl is used by Serial. Do you have NI-Serial installed? If so, try repairing it. If that still doesn't work, you can also try going into your Vision Builder AI/plugins folder and adding a .bak extension to the 71 IVB Serial.llb so that VBAI doesn't try loading it. This obviously isn't a good solution, but will help us determine if that is really the culprit that is cuasing this problem.

Thanks,

Brad

[lcady]

Brad,

  Thanks for the help.  Bypassing the "71 IVB Serial.llb" file by naming it "71 IVB Serial.llb.bak" works.  I first tried to repair the "NI-Serial 3.8 for Labview Real-Time" from Control panel / Programs and features / National Instruments Software.  That did not work.  I noticed there are three other versions of NI-Serial on my system. 

The other versions are:

NI-Serial 3.7 for Labview Real-Time

NI-Serial 3.7.1 for Labview Real-Time

NI-Serial 3.8

I will repair each of them to see how it affects the 71 IVB Serial.llb file.

Again, thank you for the help.  I was stuck on this for days.  I would have never put the serial library together with this error.  You saved me from continuing down the brute force path of uninstall/re-install.

To show my appreciation, here's a smiley face 🙂  

   :womanwink:

( . Y . ) 

[Brad]

Glad that solved the problem for you, and if you don't need serial you're able to continue working. I'm not sure how your software got in a screwed up state for the serial driver, but hopefully repairing all your serial drivers will fix this.

Thanks,

Brad

[ChristopheC]

Have you recently updated some NI Software that might have triggered this issue, like updating the version of VISA or Serial?

Would that be possible to attach the list of NI software installed on your computer that you can get from Measurement and Automation Explorer? That would help us trying to reproduce the problem here and identify what is causing the incompatibility.

From MAX, you can create this report using File>>Create Report..., then select Technical Support Report.

Thanks in advance.

Christophe

[lcady]

Ok, so I created a report.  It indicates that the list of the com port aliases are TOTAL ROT!  

Here's a snapshot of the nonsense:

It really likes COM3 and COM4 for some reasson; its hoarding them.

My personal favorite is: A COM4] cent sign carriage return \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\.....

Yeah, so how do i fix this?  Is there a file that I can chop up in a hex editor, that doesn't have a check sum?  Is there a "COM PORT ALIAS FIXER" utility that can be run?

Thanks for helping identify this by the way (BTW for short). 

This error was caused by adding a USB com port to my laptop.  (It is COM15 on the list.)   It uses the FTDI chip virtual com port driver.  It isn't the first USB com port on my system that uses that driver.  I didn't have this problem when I installed COM11 way back in two thousand and nine.  Anyhow, do you still want the whole report?  It's chock full of intimate details about my computer that I'm not sure i should share for less than $25.

[Brad]

Sounds like you might want to post this on the Serial HW/driver thread since they have better experts on this stuff there. I don't have any good recommendation for how to clean this up.

Good luck,

Brad

[ChristopheC]

This might explain the problem you're seeing in VBAI. However, it would be interesting to send us or post the report that lists the versions of NI Software you have, that is created by Max, so we could try to reproduce the problem in house.

Thanks.

[lcady · Accepted solution]

The problem was the NIvisa ini file MAX was reading. 

I deleted the ports from

C:\ProgramData\National Instruments\NIvisa\visaconf.ini

Rebooted

And everything is cool.

 - That means VBAI 2011 SP1 doesn't lock up when it starts.

Both visaconf.ini files are attached inside the .ZIPs

This problem was first noticed on June 29th, so note when software was uninstalled in the report.  As part of my initial troubleshooting I got out the biggest hammer I could find and deleted all versions of VBAI and any vision related tools, and tried to repair Device Drivers Aug 2011, and tried to install Device Drivers feb 2012, and Re-installed VBAI 2011 SP1.  I still have to put vision acquisition (etc.) back on.

A knowledge base article was helpful in finding the ini file location.

"Why Do I Get a Conflict Error When I Try to Rename my Serial Port in Measurement & Automation Explo...

Document ID:   3719MD5S

[Brad]

Thanks for posting this info, hopefully it will be helpful if anyone else runs into this. Good debugging work!

Thanks,

Brad