RSLogix 5000/Studio 5000 Installation - Windows Server 2019

Hi all,

Status update for posterity, and also request for help!

I have spent the day installing as much RA software as possible on Windows Server 2019. Results as follows:

RSLogix 5 v9.00.00 - installed and launches successfully

RSLogix 500 v12.00.01 - installed and launches successfully

RSLogix 5000 v13 - installed, but will not launch due to a 16-bit activation software issue. See attached screenshot - is there any way around this? Not that I'm too worried about v13, if that's the worst of it I'm in good shape

RSLogix 5000 v15-20 - installed and launches successfully. Several of the earlier versions installed OK but would not launch due to the absence of .NET 1.1, which will not install on Server 2019 (unsurprisingly). I managed to sideload it into existence with a little help from this website and after that they all worked like a charm

Studio 5000 v21-24 - installed and launches successfully

Studio 5000 v26 - installed, but will not launch. Splash screen appears, and then nothing. Any ideas on this one? I'm sure I've seen this symptom before, and it had a simple fix, but I can't for the life of me find any posts about it on the forum. I did get an error message during installation of the prerequisites (see screenshot), but the install of Logix Designer itself went off without a hitch. I figure whatever that error message relates to, it's likely part of the problem, because I didn't get any similar errors on any other versions.

Studio 5000 v27 - won't let me install because it's not supported on this OS (see screenshot). Well, duh, but neither are literally any of the other versions I've just installed and you happily let me have a go anyway, why not at least attempt it? Anyone know how to get around this and just force it to install? I tried running the Logix Designer setup file directly, instead of going the whole package install, but it tells me it must be run from the main setup package

Studio 5000 v28-32 - installed and launches successfully

Anyone got any tips on how to get v13, 26 and 27 to play ball?

I've encountered similar issues in the past especially with versions 16 and lower. The headache was to the point that the only solution was to create separate VMs for a cluster of installations. Trust me, I've tried installing in different orders, calling Rockwell, re-installing, etc.

If anyone has a solution to get all these versions working correctly; it would be awesome.

Lastly, I still have a VM with v16 - v20 and v17 keeps crashing on startup.

Best of luck to you sir.

Yeah, I'm not even going to bother calling Rockwell for help on this one. I'm 100% in unsupported territory installing software that's not even meant to work on Windows 7, on Windows 2019. They won't be the slightest bit interested in helping. But we engineers are a determined bunch, and I'm sure with our powers combined we can trick it into working somehow!

I'm *almost* happy with the result. Version 13 I can definitely live without. If I could get either v26 OR v27 working I'd probably call it good enough as well. It just irks me that I've got a gap where two relatively recent and sequential versions should be. Two in a row makes it more likely that the gap will catch me out, where if it was only one I'd probably be able to satisfy myself that it'll only be the odd occasion.

I mean, I'll still have installs on Windows 7, XP SP2 and XP SP3 VMs to back me up, but I'd always prefer to know that, for 99% of my applications, I'll only really need the one VM.

how do you like the server OS so far speed wise?

Great! So much faster than my old W7 machine.

ASF said:

Great! So much faster than my old W7 machine.

Click to expand...

My first VM was a Windows 7 64 setup, I started using VMs about a year ago, and when I first set it up I was like “man this is nice and smooth and snappy”. Then I did the Windows Server thing and had to go back to the W7 VM to get a file and wanted to cry inside.

Update! Version 26 now works - the fix was to find the v26 executable and set it to run in compatibility mode for *shudders* Windows Vista. Further info in technote 1038591 (techconnect required)


And definitely with you on wanting to cry. I think I'm going to blow away my existing Rockwell W7 VM and create a much more lightweight one, with only a handful of essentials on it. Forget about CCW, FTView, newer versions of Studio 5000 - just keep Logix 5, 500, 5000 and early versions of Studio. Hopefully that will at least make it a little bit faster on the odd occasion I have to open it. Oh, and I'll have to keep v27 as well, unless I can find a way to trick the installer into forgetting it's not supported

Further update! I managed to trick v27 into thinking it was supported, and sure enough it installed and works just fine! I once again had to set compatibility mode to *twitch* Windows Vista, but other than that, I now have every version from v15 through to v32 installed and working.

To trick it into thinking it was supported, I used Notepad++ to open the Logix_V27.xml file that's in the Config folder on the installation media. I then went through and changed every instance of to It really was that simple - I launched the installer as normal, the warning was gone, and it installed just fine!

Aaaaaand one more update: uninstalling and reinstalling v13 got it to work too! So now I have everything from v13 through v32 working on Windows Server 2019. I also have CCW v12, FTView v11 and RSNetworx v28 all installed and working. I'm going to call this experiment a huge success.

i'm still using windows 7 on 2012 era laptops. I can't stand waiting for computers to do things - that's how I end up here.


Why are you using windows server 2019 instead of windows 10? Do you think the server edition is preferable to windows 10? what hardware are you using?

Thanks

Hardware is a Macbook Pro (my particular one is an early 2015 model, my colleagues have a mixture of older and newer MBP's).

Server 2019 over Windows 10 because it's essentially a very lightweight, stripped down version of Windows 10, and tends to give you a little bit more leeway over when updates are going to happen (instead of just "hey I see you're in the middle of a firmware update on this GuardLogix processor, but Adobe Reader Updater needs to install an update so I'm just gonna reboot real quick ok thanks"). This thread was the trigger for me to take the plunge and have a go, with others reporting good results on other variants of Windows Server, figured if I'm going to update, might as well try for the newest to give myself the longest possible time before needing to do it again.

When I install Windows 10 straight from disk onto a clean VM, the first 20 minutes are spent uninstalling unnecessary cr*pware (Candy Crush? I mean, come on) and wishing that 99% of the other garbage on there could be uninstalled too (looking at you real hard, XBox). Whereas you install Server, and when you click start, there are about three things in there - server management tools, administrative tools, and windows defender. That's about it. So, so much more lightweight, and as a result, much faster.

ASF said:

Hardware is a Macbook Pro (my particular one is an early 2015 model, my colleagues have a mixture of older and newer MBP's).

Server 2019 over Windows 10 because it's essentially a very lightweight, stripped down version of Windows 10, and tends to give you a little bit more leeway over when updates are going to happen (instead of just "hey I see you're in the middle of a firmware update on this GuardLogix processor, but Adobe Reader Updater needs to install an update so I'm just gonna reboot real quick ok thanks"). This thread was the trigger for me to take the plunge and have a go, with others reporting good results on other variants of Windows Server, figured if I'm going to update, might as well try for the newest to give myself the longest possible time before needing to do it again.

When I install Windows 10 straight from disk onto a clean VM, the first 20 minutes are spent uninstalling unnecessary cr*pware (Candy Crush? I mean, come on) and wishing that 99% of the other garbage on there could be uninstalled too (looking at you real hard, XBox). Whereas you install Server, and when you click start, there are about three things in there - server management tools, administrative tools, and windows defender. That's about it. So, so much more lightweight, and as a result, much faster.

Click to expand...

Are the newer MacBook pros any better then the older ones? I’m looking on the used market for an older model where the storage was actually still upgradable, I think that ended in 2015-2016? Also I think they maxed out at 16gb of ram? My Lenovo P71 has 32gb and when I have a server VM and a W7 VM open with autocad on the host OS it eats it, but the ram usage if I remember correctly is above 16gb.

Is your machine running an evaluation version or is it properly activated? I have just gone though some dramas converting Server 2016 evaluation boxes into fully licensed. Maybe 2019 doesn't have the same 'feature'

I don't think the storage has been upgradeable as long as I've been using them. I've just gone straight for the 1TB SSD right off the bat, which is enough for a dozen or so fully loaded VM's and still plenty of room to spare. Then I have a USB-C SSD handy in case I need to move things around - those things will copy a 100GB VM from external disk to internal disk in a couple of minutes flat. Sure the 1TB SSD bumps the price up quite a bit, but when you figure in the fact that it'll last a whole lot longer, it's worth the outlay.

RAM is one area they're falling behind. When I first started using them, they maxed out at 16GB of RAM, which was pretty high end at the time. That's what I use, and it works pretty well. I can run two VM's simultaneously (three if two of them are on XP), and usually there are no noticeable performance issues. The time you do start to see them is if you're running two VM's and they're both doing some intensive work, like publishing autocad drawings on one, and Windows 10 installing updates behind the scenes in another. I can always tell when Windows 10 is trying to do a sneaky update because my fan starts getting noisier

In my case, it also depends if I'm at my desk with two 24" monitors to run, or out onsite with just the built in display. The 13" MBP doesn't have a dedicated graphics card, so that takes a bit of processing power away from other tasks, but if you go for the 15" you can get a dedicated graphics card. One of my colleagues has the 15" and can confirm there's definitely an improvement in that regard.

Nowadays, 16GB of RAM is a bit light on. Apple have largely refused to increase their RAM offering because the only RAM that can get over the 16GB hurdle is DDR4 RAM, which is way more power hungry. Apple pride themselves on battery life (and rightly so, if I'm only running one VM, I can go all day commissioning on a single charge) and increasing RAM at the expense of battery life isn't a trade off they've been willing to make. That said, in the latest release they finally caved and offered 32GB of RAM in the 15" only. At the same time they squeezed a much bigger battery into the case so that overall it came out about the same as far as battery life goes. Me personally, I prefer the 13", so I'm not going to upgrade until they work out how to get 32GB of RAM into a 13" frame without losing my ability to forget my charger at home and still work all day.


But in any case, I'm convinced that you need less RAM with a mac host anyway. I've several times compared my setup to other engineers running PC hosts, and by all accounts their machine should knock mine out of the park. They'll have double the RAM, a much newer and faster processor, solid state everything, etc etc - and mine will still leave them in the dust. I don't know if they just need to spend some more time optimising settings and getting things set up better, but regardless I'm happy with my speeds!

Geoff White said:

Is your machine running an evaluation version or is it properly activated? I have just gone though some dramas converting Server 2016 evaluation boxes into fully licensed. Maybe 2019 doesn't have the same 'feature'

Click to expand...

Still running in evaluation mode, I have all of that fun ahead of me! Any tips?