VISA Tulip Passports Are No Longer on My System

Updated Nov 2, 2021

Reported In

Driver

  • NI-VISA 19.0
  • NI-VISA 18.5
  • NI-VISA 18.0

Issue Details

  • The NI-VISA Tulip Passports are no longer present on my system after I did a software update. How do I restore them?
  • I can't see my GPIB devices in MAX anymore after updating to the newest version of VISA.
  • The LabVIEW custom installer shows the error message "The 'NI-VISA TULIP Passport 19.0.0' installation has failed with the following error: This installation is forbidden by system policy. Contact your system administrator".

Solution

This issue is caused by a bug where downloading NI VISA 18.0,18.5, or 19.0 from NI Package Manager causes the Tulip Passport to be unintentionally uninstalled during the update. Note, this does not occur with the .msi based installer.

This issue can be resolved by re-running the proper Tulip passport installer. A batch script has been created to simplify this procedure:
  1. Download the batch script attached to this article (RestoreTulipPassport.bat)
  2. Run the batch script by double clicking the file in File Explorer
  3. Open MAX up and go to Tools -> NI VISA -> VISA Options -> Passports
  4. Verify that the Tulip passport is present and check the checkbox to enable it