Access Desktop PanelView Plus 1000

Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum but I've been directed here a few times while troubleshooting in the past so I figured I would give it a shot. I'm currently in school studying to become an electrical engineer so if I have some more obvious questions please excuse them. Anyway, I'm working at an internship now on a unit that has a PanelView Plus 1000 running FactoryTalk View ME 5.10.11.09

I need to get to the desktop to fix something with ActiveX. Before my internship started, someone had run a macro that creates a file on the desktop...blah blah blah. I just need to delete this file so that it sees the file gone, recreates the file, and fixes the issue I am having. However, when I follow the guide in the Rockwell literature, I am having no luck getting to the Desktop. I do not see the "Desktop Access" tab under "Terminal Settings" I am not certain if it was disabled or why it is not there. I tried connected a USB keyboard and using various keyboard shortcuts to kill AB's window with no luck. Any help would be appreciated. Sorry for the long winded question!

Manual I was using (Page 54)

PanelView Plus had a hardware and software overhaul at Version 6, and that user manual is for the newer v6 terminals. Any terminal* that ran v5.x or prior firmware cannot run v6 firmware or have v6 features.

One thing that v6 added was that Desktop Access became a standard feature rather than an option.

In v5 and before, Desktop Access was a feature only available in the "extended CE features" version of the terminal. These were called "VersaView CE" in the beginning, then "PanelView Plus CE".

This is all a long way of saying that there's no easy way to access the Desktop in your terminal.

The Desktop directories might still exist, and your predecessor might have written to them. If the ActiveX object has directory access, then the CE Shell should have directory access too.

You can use autorun.bat to run command-line batch files that include file manipulation.

Try using an autorun.bat file to just run CMD.EXE with a keyboard attached. That might give you enough command-line interaction with a CMD window to browse to the desktop directories and find (and delete) the files you need.


* The exception is a small number of PV+400/600 that were built with v6 hardware and shipped with v5 firmware for a few months. This does not apply to your PV+1000.

And welcome to the Forum, by the way !

I presumed that you knew about autorun with the PV+ terminals, so I want to clarify.

PV+ terminals do support the good old "autorun.bat" batch file execution method.

If you have a file named 'autorun.bat' with ordinary Windows batch file commands like 'Copy' or 'Del' in the root directory of a CF card or USB memory stick, the PV+ will execute that file when you insert the memory device.

The Windows CE OS in these terminals only supports FAT16 formatting, so a device needs to be formatted for FAT16 (and thus be under 2 GB) to work.

Ken,

This idea makes sense to me and I am going to give it a shot. It may not be today, as I am still working on tuning the PID loop for the unit. (More painful than I thought). Thanks for the quick response. I will post my results upon testing them. Thank you again!

I got some free time this afternoon and gave it a shot. I used a batch file "autorun.bat" on the compact flash card that is in the HMI. I started up the command prompt just fine, however, AB's ME Station started up shortly afterwards and kicked me out of the command prompt. Their application seems to boot you out no matter what you do. Any suggestions?

Let FTView ME Station start up, then insert the USB or CF card once the application is running or the Configuration Mode windows are showing.

The CMD window should remain on top.

Ken this seemed to work for me. I put the CF in after I closed down the app and the CMD window popped up. It took some navigation and learning but I successfully navigated around. I didn't fix my issue, as I didn't see the files my predecessor told me about so I will have to keep digging. However, I will post some things I learned and would like to share in case anyone else stumbles upon this.

On the PanelView pressing Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Windows_Start_Key (with keyboard attached) will bring up a task manager type window where you are able to click "RUN" then "BROWSE" change the "Type" to "All Files" and you will be able to browse through in a more user friendly fashion rather than digging through the CMD window.

Also running "\Windows\control.exe" will allow you to pop open the control panel window

Here is another post where I got my information from:
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=25189

Thanks again for the help!

Thanks for that followup; I had forgotten both of those techniques as it's been a few years since I had to "break into" a PV+.