Scott E.

RSLinx pc transfer question

10 posts in this topic

I have a customer who had a PC with an RSLinx Classic installation die.  The RSLinx was being used as an OPC server to collect information from a PLC5/25 through a 1784-PKXT DH+ connection and serve the data to an Automation Direct Lookout Direct HMI program on the PC.   We have a new PC set back up and the customer was able to have the hard drive recovered.  I am trying to get their system back up an on line.   After I install RSLinx, can I copy the files (harmony project, if I remember correctly) from the recovered hard drive into the new PC and have everything work?  or will I need to completely re-set up the OPC server?  I really doubt that they had used the backup utility.  But if they did, what file extension and location should I look in?

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I think you will need to backup of the configuration from the backup utility.  Otherwise, you are going to have to knuckle them back into the driver and topic configuration.

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9 minutes ago, pcmccartney1 said:

I think you will need to backup of the configuration from the backup utility.  Otherwise, you are going to have to knuckle them back into the driver and topic configuration.

The original PC is dead, so I can't back it up.  I have a copy of the data and files recovered from the faulty hard drive.   I was hoping that i could overwrite the configuration data for RSLinx with the recovered data and make it work.

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All I can say is give it a try with the harmony files.  Don't touch the Harmony.dll file.

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6 minutes ago, pcmccartney1 said:

All I can say is give it a try with the harmony files.  Don't touch the Harmony.dll file.

The ones that I was thinking about were in the RSCommon directory under program files.  I would also look at the file dates to try and find the ones that look like have changed more recently.  If i do get it working, you can bet that I will be backing it up when I am done.

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Have you tried to setup a new RSLinx connection and activate an OPC topic?  There isn't much to this part of restoring a system, other than the syntax/topic name must be exact.  By digging into the HMI application you will see the back-end of the OPC connection (which should reveal the RSLinx connection/OPC topic name).

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4 hours ago, kaiser_will said:

Have you tried to setup a new RSLinx connection and activate an OPC topic?  There isn't much to this part of restoring a system, other than the syntax/topic name must be exact.  By digging into the HMI application you will see the back-end of the OPC connection (which should reveal the RSLinx connection/OPC topic name).

That is my fall back, if I can't just copy the info.  There are a lot of points and no good way to see them in a list on the HMI software.

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Have you looked into running the old drive in a VM (Virtual Machine)?

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Ok, It is done.   I figured out that the OPC setup is stored in the registry.   I was able to load the hive of the old computer and find the correct keys.   I then used those as a model to set up the new OPC topic in RSLinx with the same name.  The HMI software was able to reconnect and scan the topic after that.   After everything was set up and working, I made a backup of the configuration so that maybe next time I won't have to struggle with this.

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Thanks for reporting back Scott.

Personally, I have hundreds of customers that I have installed RSLinx.  Part of my procedure is to make the backup of the configuration and the license file.  I then copy those files and store on my servers, so that I can help them recover for various reasons.  The most common reason is that a hard drive fails (I tend to apply the license to the disk drive, others here would say you should apply to the NIC).  The assumption is that if they can download and install the RSLinx software, I can then get them licensed and restore their configuration up and running in a few minutes.

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