Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Event: i8042prt failed to start

On an HP Proliant DL 380 G5 server with Windows 2003 Server, the annoying "A device or service failed to start" occurred during boot. The computer shared screen, mouse and keyboard with another computer via a KVM switch. Event log showed a "i8042prt failed to start" event.

The solution was found on HPs support pages. In brief, it states that the following regkey must be changed:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters

The value Headless must be changed to value 0x1 (REG_DWORD
)
Data: 0x1 (Allow Hotplugging) | 0x0 (Hotplugging not allowed)

Problem cause (assumed): This happens when the computer boots without finding any keyboard/mouse. This occurs when the computer is connected to a KVM switch and the KVM serves another computer during boot.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Ni-DAQ test panel does not run

Platform: Windows Server 2003 with NiDaq 8.0

User is not allowed to run test panel under Ni-Daq's "Measurement and Automation" (the choice is grayed out). A program that uses Ni-Daq's libraries terminates silently with user credentials. Both problems are related.

Solution: Users who want to be able to run the above mentioned programs must be given Modify or Full control permissions on this folder:

C:\Program Files\National Instruments\Shared\platform\memory\sharedMemoryFiles


It took a lot of research and experimenting with permissions on files and registry keys to reach this conclusion, but it seems consistent that this was the problem.

Caveat: When connecting to the server via Remote Desktop as a user, I was not allowed to run the test panel or other programs using the Ni-Daqs libraries, even if the above solution was applied. Being an administrator, I was allowed. Researching the problem via Remote Desktop at first certainly put a few extra hours of work into finding the solution :(

Caveat 2: On older NT4 systems this will probably not be a problem, because it does not restrict the permissions on C:\program files to readonly for standard users (by default).

Caveat 3: On older Ni-Daq versions (ver. 6.9.1 comfirmed), the above mentioned folder does not exist. Whether that means that the problem is then irrelevant or to be solved differently is not known.