Powerflex 525 Password Override

Hello,

I think I have inadvertently locked myself out of the AB 525 drive by changing the password parameter (A552), Doh!

Is there anyway to override this and perform a factory reset?

UKB said:

Hello,

I think I have inadvertently locked myself out of the AB 525 drive by changing the password parameter (A552), Doh!

Is there anyway to override this and perform a factory reset?

Click to expand...

Any talk of "overriding passwords" around here is highly frowned upon... And it also will not net you any answers. Contact Rockwell for any help on that.

I personally have not used the password option to protect parameters so I am unsure as to what parameters you may have access to in the drive HIM, but I did dig up a lab manual that lays out one way to reset the drive back to factory defaults. Check out the bottom of page 12, 'Reset Drive to Defaults'. Maybe it could help?

https://www.24k.com.sg/rockwellauto...ew PowerFlex® 525 AC Drives - Lab Manual.pdf

You could also just swap out the logical unit for another (if you have an extra one laying around) and just reset it to work with the power base. I've had the logical unit die on me before, but the power half was just fine. New face + dump in copy of the old parameters = back up and running in minutes. Rockwell had a good idea on that one.

UKB said:

Hello,

I think I have inadvertently locked myself out of the AB 525 drive by changing the password parameter (A552), Doh!

Is there anyway to override this and perform a factory reset?

Click to expand...

That's not possible without the password:

TN565557 PowerFlex 520 Series Will Parameter A552 [Program Lock] be reset by Firmware Flash? (Access Level: Everyone)

The following technote explains how passwords work in the PowerFlex 525/523 drives:

TN576985 Entering a Passcode/Password into a PowerFlex 525/523 (Access Level: Everyone)

Hi Nhatsen,

I cant open the links to the tech notes,
would you copy and paste in here?

Many thanks,

Copying and pasting technotes directly is not allowed as per the KB user agreement, but the access level is "everyone" which means you just have to create a (free) account and you will be able to sign in and view them.

I just tried pass wording a PF525 and then tried flashing it and what I found was that if you flashed to the same level ie. 4 to 4 or 5 to 5 the password stayed locked however if we went from 5 to 4 or 4 to 5 the password was removed and the drive had the default values in it, except for the IP address which remained.

Alan

alan_505 said:

I just tried pass wording a PF525 and then tried flashing it and what I found was that if you flashed to the same level ie. 4 to 4 or 5 to 5 the password stayed locked however if we went from 5 to 4 or 4 to 5 the password was removed and the drive had the default values in it, except for the IP address which remained.

Alan

Click to expand...

Comprehensive reply, alan_505, and in my view is acceptable to post, since the password removal procedure defaulted the parameters.

I'm not sure why A-B didn't do the same thing if you flashed same version, but then some design considerations can seem ludicrous. In my book any firmware "flash" should reset any device to a factory default conditions, and it does seem strange that it doesn't.

daba said:

Comprehensive reply, alan_505, and in my view is acceptable to post, since the password removal procedure defaulted the parameters.

I'm not sure why A-B didn't do the same thing if you flashed same version, but then some design considerations can seem ludicrous. In my book any firmware "flash" should reset any device to a factory default conditions, and it does seem strange that it doesn't.

Click to expand...

The purpose of the Password Lock is for OEMs and end users to be able to protect their IP as implemented in the drive programming. But if that is done, and a Firmware update is required for bug fixes, safety updates etc., you need to allow end users to update their firmware without erasing existing programming.

The reason is works as reported, is because a change from 4 to 5 means there was a hardware change, so ostensibly any existing programming would be invalid anyway if that change is made. So for safety reasons it HAS TO erase everything. Had you attempted to actually use a drive that was originally Rev 4.xx and updated to 5.xx, it may or may not have actually worked (which would have been spelled out in the Revision Notes). But in this case all he was doing was changing, then changing back as a workaround for wiping out the Password Lock.

Alan_505,

thanks very much, I hadn't got as far as actually flashing the drive, I read on the website that it will not restore parameters to factory default, this must have been for the same patch version.

Thanks all,

kind regards,
UKB

So as long as you have a copy of the parameters you could flash the drive to a different firmware and then back to what firmware you want and then load the parameters back in.

Alan

Thanks for the help guys, I have flashed the firmware back to v4.01 using the USB port.

I could not get this to work with windows 7 64bit. I got the error reported here (http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=90343)

Using an old laptop with XP I flashed to v4.01 which restored all parameters to default,
I then tried flashing to v.5.1, that however did not work on the XP machine,
Hopefully I should be able to connect over ethIP and update the firmware over connceted components software.

thanks again,
UKB