Thank you for your reply. I tried all that but to no avail :( But now I’ve found the solution. The problem was in the way Windows was installed. After re-installing Windows completely it is OK (before I used to restore the image of installed OS). The main suspicion is for Windows Updates: I’d installed the critical updates (KB873339-KB932168, 75 in total) before the drivers for PC adapter USB. Now I installed first the drivers, and then the updates – everything is OK. There’s still a small probability that the reason is different, but, having spent about 30 hours installing and re-installing, I don’t want to experiment any more. Also I'd like to express my opinion, based on 6 year experience, that Simatic soft is very heavy, slow, and capricious. Every new installation is a challenge, and if you don’t have the image of your hard drive with all the software properly installed, you risk spending several days on reinstalling every couple of months.