Use the Rockwell Product Compatibility Page to Avoid Frustration!
I recently had to install a different version of Studio 5000 (formerly RSLogix5000 or just Logix5000) for a project for a customer. The version of the software they were using at their plant was v26.03. I only had versions 19.01, 20.04, 24.01, 28.03 and 32.02. I was running everything on a VMWare VM with Win10 Pro 64 bit installed. I didn’t want to create another VM to add on one version of software (why would I?), so I attempted to install version 26.03 on top of my other versions.
Install
The install proceeded normally. I restarted when the install was done. I had the customer’s programs in a folder on my desktop, so I double clicked on one of the programs to open it in Studio 5000 v26.03. The splash screen flashed up, and I saw the logix icon on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Everything looked like it was working. The splash screen disappeared and all traces of Studio 5000 disappeared. I figured it was just taking a bit to launch the editing window, so I waited awhile longer. Nothing.
This was not good. I launched control panel to see if v26.03 had in fact been installed. I went to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Programs and Features. Sure enough, Studio 5000 Logix Designer v26.03.00 was listed in the installed programs list.
Next, I went online to google and searched for this issue. There were a lot of solutions out there – some good and some not. Some of the solutions came from the Rockwell Knowledge Base website. Here is what I tried:
- Re-install Studio 5000 Logix Designer v26.03.00 again. Then re-boot. Sometimes it does not completely install. – No. This did not work.
- Find Studio 5000 Logix Designer in the Program Files (x86) directory. Here is the path to mine on Win10 Pro 64bit: Program Files (x86) > Rockwell Software > Studio 5000 > Logix Designer > ENU > v26 > Bin > LogixDesigner.Exe.
- Now right click on LogixDesigner.exe and click on Properties.
- Then go to Compatibility.
- I tried running it in Windows 7 compatibility mode. Nope. Didn’t work.
- I tried running it as an administrator. Nope. Didn’t work and caused a different error (this program requires elevation).
Next, I decided to search the Rockwell Knowledge Base page directly. That yielded pretty much the same results as above. Then, I finally started thinking about the compatibility options and decided to check the Rockwell Product Compatibility page to see what it said about Studio 5000 Logix Designer and Win10. Sure enough: it is not supported to run under Win10.
Why I did not do this first, I do not know. You would think that the Rockford Compatability Page would be the first thing to check. I hope you see this page before you go through the mess I went through to get to this point. Anyway, you can see that in the graphic below, the the Rockford Compatability Page search results clearly show that you are not supposed to run v26.03 in Win10.
Finally, I had to switch to an older VM image I have that has Win7 Pro on it. I installed Studio 5000 Logix Designer v26.03 on it. It worked the first time and worked correctly.
I guess I had gotten so used to using Win10 with Rockwell products that I never considered that a product would not work on Win7. This is especially true since v24.01 works fine on Win10. I don’t know what is different about v26.03, but it does not work on Win10. I don’t run into that version much anyway, but in this case I had to have.
I hope the customer upgrades their processor to v28.03 soon. They will be forced to upgrade the machine PC’s to 10 very soon, so it would be better for them to move on to a better version of Logix as well.
Conclusion
From now on I am going to check the Rockwell Product Compatibility Page when I have issues with Rockwell software acting weird. I hope this helps someone and keeps them from going through the wasted time that I went through to figure this out. – Erik