RobertyChon

Passwords in Runtime

4 posts in this topic

Hi

I'm looking for a little bit of help. I have a WinCC HMI which will not let me log on with one of the passwords. The general logon and admin both work fine. The Engineer password doesn't work (no display at the top of the screen where the other user names are displayed). There is no warning that the password is in correct or the account locked out (missed in the original programing I think). I have all the project files however I'm using a runtime licence.

I would like to log in as admin open the project and clear the password lockout. The issue I have is that I have to use TIA portal and it will not show the project file, is this due to the fact that I have a runtime licence. Is there another way to see if the user name is locked and removed. Like I said I have the admin password which works.

 

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Kind Regards

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Is this a physical touch screen HMI (Like an MP or comfort panel) or a PC-based system? Since you mentioned a runtime license, I suspect it's the latter, but in case it's an actual HMI:

My first thought is there have been too many invalid login attempts. There is a check-box in the runtime user administration inside the development software (WinCC Flexible for Simatic Manager or WinCC Comfort in Portal) that is checked by default and blocks the user after 3 invalid login attempts. The invalid attempts don't have to be consecutive or within a specific time frame. That's the default setting. The only way we found to unlock that user is to re-download the project to the HMI. Restoring a backup may have worked too, but by the time we knew about that option, we had already un-checked all of the boxes. It became our routine as soon as we got a machine.  I never saw that setting anywhere in the operating system of the HMI, but it may be buried there somewhere.

One downside to downloading the project is that you have to select the "overwrite user administration" (or something like that; it's been a while) in order to reset the invalid login attempts. That will overwrite any user names or passwords that have been changed since the last download.There's a way to get around that, but you have to have some code inside the runtime already. If it's not there, you're out of luck.

Since you only have a runtime license, you're not going to be able to check the project file for that setting. I no longer have a license for that software (changed jobs), so I can't help you, but someone on here may be able to take a look at it.

If it's a PC-based system, it may have similar settings somewhere, but my only exposure to that was as maintenance working with one machine a long time ago.

 

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Hi Joe

Thanks very much for answering my question.

Yes its a PC based touch screen. I was unsure if it was the touch screen for a while until I plugged in an additional keyboard but it may have been too late by then.

It would be WinCC comfort in the TIA portal. When I use the portal to load up the project file it doesn't see it. I know I'm in the right place as this is where the autoloader is directed. So I thought it was just because I had a run time licence. I was hopeful even with a runtime licence I could reset the passwords.

Unfortunately I don't have a licence to redownload the program as we only can look at PLCs (contractors installed this device). There must be a way around this as our last Engineer changed the passwords (unfortunately he has moved on). Is it possible to just change the password file?

Kind Regards

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On a regular HMI, you can add/change/remove/etc. all users...if you have the development software and source code. I had to do that on a number of occasions. I don't know on a PC-based system.

The archive for a Comfort Panel HMI will be a file with a ".zap*" extension. The "*" will be the version of Portal used, so a v13 file will be ".zap13". In the Portal world, I never used the default location for projects, to make archives and backups easier for myself. I wouldn't be surprised if the files are in a non-standard location. If it's a purely PC-based system, I don't know what the file extensions would be.

Have you reached out to your local Siemens distributor or the local tech support line? Here in the US, their tech support wasn't awful for standard issues. The issues we tended to have were less standard, though, so we got mixed results. Your support may be better over there.

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