Windows Update broke NI-DMM, NI-SWITCH, NI-DCPOWER drivers? What is going on.

[mwatkins]

Howdy all, 

Here's my story: 

2/8/22 logged into the dev station to run a sequence. Everything fails. 

Open MAX and all instruments are showing outside of the PXI chassis, all exclamation marks and broken dreams. 

Remove and re-install: 

 PXI System Config

 NI-DMM

NI-DCPower

NI-Switch

 Reset MAX Configuration. 

Reboots between each step. 

Still broken. Windows device manager shows unknown devices. 

MAX reports for each device that 'Windows does not have a driver associated with the device'. 

Additionally, really weird is that NI Package Manager says NI-DMM installed but MAX does not show it as such. 

Anybody else seeing something similar? 

Windows update shows several updates happened between 2/5-2/7 :

[mwatkins]

 Update: 

 System is back up. Only took 6ish weeks of background effort. Tried many things, even resorted to open a ticket with NI support. No help.

 Many things includes repairing all NI drivers via package manager, remove and re-install all drivers via package manager. Moving cards between slots. Trying other hardware, trying this hardware in that machine. Reinstall MAX. Reset MAX config. Delete pxisys.ini. Reinstall platform services.  Installed a old image. problem persisted!   

Solution: 

 Nuke hard drive and re-install Windows.  

 Reinstall All drivers. 

 NI DC-POWER 21.5 had to be uninstalled and installed DC-POWER 19.1 via offline installer. NI Package Manager insisted the driver was installed but it was not (directory was empty). 

So at the end of the day, what happened? Something with Windows Update and NI driver stack got horribly corrupted beyond repair. 

Whats the moral? 

  Back up your work. 

  Make a recovery image from a clean machine. 

  Disable Windows update if possible (not possible due to IT here).