[rsisk]

Sure thing, I'll repost the relevant stuff from this thread over at NI.

What makes reformatting the cRIO scary was the stories I have heard about how carefully the benchtest procedures have to be followed or you could brick your system. We were way off the beaten path, and it was our first time with the cRIO, so we had no idea if we were going to be able to load software onto the cRIO after a format in safe mode. Then the format ran for 20 minutes without any type of feedback whether it was making progress or not. We finally had to close the "formatting" message box without having any idea if it was still working or complete. Fortunately there were no ill effects from doing that.

I know it is tough to document everything or cover every use case. Some improvements that would have helped:

A progress bar on the formatting process to let us know how far it has progressed.

Perhaps the message box that pops up when the format in safe mode is kicked off could give an idea of how to proceed once the format is complete, i.e., point to the documentation on how to reload software. I had no idea if the cRIO was going to be wiped to the point I would not be able to load any of the base software.

Why is the Ethernet device search on the NI-Serial menu? I just happened to stumble across it while trying to figure out what to do.

It would be nice to be able to cut and paste from the error messages, especially when there is a long list of VIs in them.