How to start WinCC RT on another Workstation and get it work

[Alex3110]

WinCC – project was developed on PC1 and connection to PLC was also made there.
The idea is to make a spare Workstation (WS) with the same IP address.

If the main WS (PC1) is broken then I disconnect it off the Ethernet network, connect PC2 and start WinCC RT on PC2.
WinCC project is single-user and has a following feature. WinCC tags are connected to STEP7 with «Named Connection», but not with «TCP/IP» as normally for the single-user WinCC projects.
After starting WinCC RT on PC2 it doesn’t work, cause «Named Connection» is not established, connection driver “is disconnected”, tag values don't transfer from PLC to PC2 and vice versa.
How to set connection between PC2 and PLC ?

[Automizer]

First, to be honest, I can not solve your Connection Problem, but: Some years ago we had the same idea but not much experience with wincc. So we did the following: We made a backup of Harddrive from PC1 with an IDE to USB adaptor and another PC. Then we restored the backup to a new harddrive in the same way so we got an exact copy of the harddrive from PC1. This "cloned" harddrive we put in our PC2 and switched it on. Windows recognised the different Hardware and loaded the suitable Drivers, so PC2 worked as good as PC1 and when some month later PC1 failed, we diconnected it, connected PC2 and everything was fine. I think, the Hardware of the two PCs should be almost the same, in our case both of them had VIA chipsets but different Video, clock and Memory.

[Alex3110]

I made the following on PC2 (it also has all the necessary SIEMENS soft, i.e. STEP7, WinCC CS & RT and so on) not connected to Ethernet network :

«Simatic Manager» -- PC Station Folder – right mouse click → PLC → Configure → «Configure» window → clear checkbox in «Use configured computer name» → put the network PC2 name into “Target Computer» field → press «Configure…» button → «NetPro» -- and I got a message for PC2 : “…Transfer completed successfully…”.
After that I saw 2 new components in «Station Configuration Editor (ONLINE)” window , «Components» tab :
– Index 1 (Application) , “RUN» status ;
– Index 2 (IE General) , “STOP» status ;

I start Index 2 (IE General) component, then it runs for 3 sec., then stops and it’s symbol goes red again. In diagnostic window I see message “… stopped because PG command”.
The names of PC1 and PC2 are differ.

But I didn’t connect PC2 to Ethernet Network yet.

How I can now start component 2 (Index 2 (IE General) ) ?