Siemens Step7 5.3 install on XP home

Is there a way of installing Step 7 5.3 on Windows XP home? It stops during install and says must be Professional.

From what I have read, this has just been tested on Professional and by looking at the differences from Professional and home, should work ok as previous versions and members have mentioned on this forum.

Does anyone know?
or is there a way to make the install think the OS is Professional rather than Home?

Thanks for any help

Step 7 is a professional PLC programming software and can only be used with Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional. A lot of the other PLC programming packages make the same demands. It is for almost all clearly stated in their compatibility statements.
Making Windows XP Home Edition look as if it was Professional might not be that easy, if not completely impossible. Actions to do this must be considered as hacking, and it is doubtfull you'll find these practises here.

Kind regards,

It is possible to make XP Home look like XP Professional by editing the registry (unfortunately, I only discovered this after forking out my money for a copy of XP Pro! ). The details were published in a German magazine a while back. I believe it was "ct". When I get a chance, I'll see if I can track the article down.

Edit: found it.

There were two articles, one involved patching the file setupreg.hiv before doing the installation and was described in ct 12/2005. The second version, which resulted in a sort of XP Pro/Lite involved simple registry edits using a second computer to access the disk of the PC on which XP Home is to be modified. This was described in ct 15/2005.

For those who can read German, you can read about it [url=http://www.wintotal.de/Tipps/Eintrag.php?RBID=2&TID=1144&URBID=12]here[/url].

PS, according to the ct house lawyers (and the Heise publishing house is big enough to have good ones ), under German law this modification would not be illegal.

There is a table comparing the functionality of XP Home, Pro/Lite and Pro here.

Hi, when we talk about Windows and Step7...
After defragmentation of my HDD Step7 has lost all the information about Licence Key. Of course I could copy the Licence Key onto the PenDrive or Floppy and then back to my Laptop, but always I become warrning that was no Licence Key, but in fact I had it on my hard disc. Eventually I had to delete all my HDD and then to instal everything once again, now Step7 works . Of course simply deinstalation of Step7 has no use, becouse Step7 writes something into registry.
Is there a possibility to clean registry after deinstalation, so that a new installation don't know anything about previous installation? I tried this with jv16 software, but without any results.

Martin

A couple of points...

Defragging a HDD with the Siemens token still on it has to be one of the best known methods of destroying the token. All the Siemens readme's and FAQs I've see warn against this. I don't think

...Step7 has lost all the information about Licence Key

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, I think you lost it.

Yes, you're quite right, STEP7 puts a lot in to the registry that doesn't get removed when you ask Windows to uninstall it. There is an article Siemens have published on their web-site on that very issue [url=http://support.automation.siemens.com/GB/llisapi.dll?query=189025&func=cslib.cssearch&content=skm%2Fmain.asp&lang=en&siteid=csius&objaction=cssearch&searchinprim=1&nodeid1=16605032&x=27&y=5[/url]]here
I don't suppose it matters whether you use regedit or jv16 or any other utility to carry out the operations they recommend.

Regards

Ken

Defragging a HDD with the Siemens token still on it has to be one of the best known methods of destroying the token.

Click to expand...

I know Siemens do warn against it, but I think the warning is aimed at the proprietary, non-MS, programs. Some of these do a much more thorough - and therefore dangerous - job than the onboard Windows defragger. I regularly defrag using the Windows utility and I've never had any problems. There again, I've got a back-up copy of my licences, so I wouldn't be that bothered anyway!

Just out of interest, what defrag program did you use, Martin?

RMA said:

There again, I've got a back-up copy of my licences,

Click to expand...

Isn't that piracy Roy????

Paul

A win defragg.

Isn't that piracy Roy????

Click to expand...

No, just the single back-up copy which I'm entitled to make under German law and for which I pay a tax on every Floppy, CD, DVD, CD-Writer, DVD-Writer and video-recorder that I buy, the proceeds of which are then distributed to copyright holders. Don't ask how they decide who gets how much and being Germany, most of it probably gets swallowed up for administration costs anyway! They were talking about extending the tax to cover copiers (and I believe printers) as well, but I don't know if that ever happened.

They have subsequently modified the law so that you may not break a copy protection scheme to make your back-up copy (which you are still otherwise allowed to have), but, of course, all my copies (well most of them, anyway) were made before the law was changed.

A win defragg.

Click to expand...

Do you mean the Windows on board utility in "Zubehör"? I use that about once a week and have never had a problem. I think you must have had some other problem at the same time, in that case.

RMA said:

Do you mean the Windows on board utility in "Zubehör"? I use that about once a week and have never had a problem. I think you must have had some other problem at the same time, in that case.

Click to expand...

Yes, exactly this. Can be, that there was another reason, but now it's to late to chceck it .

Just to add some more info - My hard disk has two partitions, a small (10M) where the licenses are stored, and a big one for everything else. You can defrag the big one without worrying about the small one. (Still using V5.2 though)

Boy, we've well and truly highjacked this Thread!

Thanks RMA for the post, no worries about the hijack!! It is all interesting stuff to a new Step7 person!!

Think I will get XP Pro and a new hard disk.

I agree you should be able to backup any software/License (as long as you don't distribute or run 2 copies, you should not be causing a problem).

You have paid for it - At any time your media (CD/DVD/Floppy) can fail and then you will never be able to restore it.

Interested in backing up the Siemens key, as defrag often - just like martin3885 lost his. This would get you out of trouble if corrupt and needed to quickly restore.

Is it easy to do?

Thanks

I recently had a problem with a corrupted license key. Several times, I called Siemens and they gave me the code to restore the license. Each time, it worked - one time, though. Upon the next start up of Step 7, no more authorization.

Finally, someone at Siemens said that it was likely due to my having changed the system time/date settings.

Of course, I had to a wipe-out and then reinstall the whole suite again.

I thought Siemens already provide a backup licence with the full thing?

When you buy STEP7 you get a full unlimited licence plus a 14-day licence. Install and run the full licence as normal. If you ever hit a problem with losing that licence due to corruption, defragmentation, or any other issue, you can then install and run the 14-day licence. Siemens tech-support will re-activate your original licence for you and this gives you 14 days to contact them. If you accept they have chosen this method of software licensing for their product, it actually seems as reasonable a way of implementing it as any I've come across.

Ken