If you installed all the updates correctly, you should have a “NetConsole for cRIO” when you click “Start->All Programs”. After you click on NetConsole, you need to enter the IP address of the cRIO (e.g. 10.te.am.2).
I am not sure about cout but you can do printf in your code. I think some other threads said cout doesn’t work.
If I recall correctly cout doesn’t redirect to the right place all the time, but cerr does. Printf seems to always work so give the other two a shot and fall back on printf if they don’t work right
If you select NetConsole in the imaging tool, is the ‘console out’ on the serial port automatically disabled? I.E. is either ‘console out’ on the serial port or NetConsole over the ethernet cable?