Simatic TIA V13 no live connection monitoring

Simatic TIA V13 and V12 both retrieves accessible devices but everything is grayed out and there is no live monitoring as if not connected. (see pics)

I am new to Siemens and our IT department just discovered this laptop was not set up on company network or administered by IT. They connected it with the company network and now I can't get TIA to work right. (I still secretly have a local login with admin rights.)
As you can see in the screen shots, TIA locates accessible devices and retrieves device info but it never seems to go online. The online/offline and monitoring on/off is all grayed out. I have disabled all antivirus and firewall services. I have tried other devices and get the same thing.

What am I missing?

1) You can scan the Accessible devices to get some information, but you won't be able to get "proper" online access without the project.

2) You don't actually have a project open. What you show in your pic "project tree" is still just browsing accessible nodes.

If you don't have a copy of the project, you may be able to upload the PLC to a project with Online -> Upload device as new station. Your project (you need to create one) needs to be in the same version of Portal as the original.

"If you don't have a copy of the project, you may be able to upload the PLC to a project with Online -> Upload device as new station. Your project (you need to create one) needs to be in the same version of Portal as the original."

Click to expand...

Thank You Mk42! http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/images/smilies/beer.gif This was the problem. I didn't have the original project and didn't know what version is was in. With trial and error I figured out it was in V12.

Furthermore for any future noobs like me....I had to create a new project > Add a new device > detect the configuration of the device > then upload from device. There where a a few errors from online project to offline project but those where solved by uploading from device and selecting overwrite offline project.

Mike,

Thanks for replying back with what worked for you, especially as a new poster! It's great to have that for people searching later