Psuudoh

I need to use the serial port to read external instruments. Last week I was able to access the serial port through LabView. However, yesterday and today LabView freezes whenever i try to access the serial port. I ran the "loopback" , "Basic Serial Write and Read", and "Advanced Serial Write and Read" LabView examples provided on the NI websites. Last week i was able to run the "Read and Display" example that comes with the LabView 7.1 installation, however this week the Instrument I/O Assistant is stuck on Initializing. Other functions of LabView works; LabView just freezes when I am trying to access any kind of I/O ports. The strange part of this is, i dont remember changing anything. They only thing that I can think of is the recent automatic windows update. Any help on this matter will be most appreciated.