WinCC from China

[yolovs]

Dear All,
Client of mine, got production line from China. As SCADA, there is WinCC traditional, V7.4 SP1. The Microsoft Windows is 10 Professional with Chinese language pack.
At the beginning, I thought, that WinCC ASIA was installed. It turns out that it was WinCC Europe installed only with Chinese language.
Because of problem with HDD, I decided to install fresh copy of WinCC and Windows 10 with English language pack.
I install Windows 10 Professional (English) and add also Chinese language pack (only as additional language) and Bulgarian keyboard.
Simatic WinCC V7.4 SP1 was installed with English and Chinese languages. I move the licenses from the original operator station to the new one.

It was BIG surprise, because of the hieroglyphs into the Text Table and the name of the PDL pictures, WinCC (or license service) require that a USB dongle with the licenses must be place and the WinCC went into demo mode.

The original WinCC operator station works without USB dongle! Somehow our Chinese colleagues succeed to cheat the WinCC license service.

Does someone knows how it is possible to use WinCC project with Chinese symbols without USB dongle?
The only information I found is: Can use ASIA license for for non-Asia region?
https://sieportal.siemens.com/en-ww/sup ... ion/268968

Thank you in advance!
Svetozar Yolov

[Dfcz]

Does someone knows how it is possible to use WinCC project with Chinese symbols without USB dongle?

Not only to our Chinese friends, but also to thousands of other professionals who cannot afford to buy a license.
Make a copy (image) of the system, and then restore it on another clean computer.
Well, you know what I mean.))

[yolovs]

It is not that simple!

When you place the image on another system, there will be problems with Windows drivers. BSD are highly possible!
In addition, there are a lot of crap software installed. Always is better when you know what you are doing.
I like a professional, need to know how they did it. I believe that they use USB virtualization software. I found in Device Manager, two instances if USB Stub of Eltima Software. Unfortunately I can not figure out what it controls or even it can not do anything.

Anyone with opinion or ideas?

Regards,
Svetozar

[xflash]

From my experience you could buy a dongle for very low price from Siemens, you need to prove that you have purchased Europe version. This process take a very long time, it has strict process.

Things happens that the site lost the dongle, and it was trouble to do the communication with OEM supplier.

After that, we told the side to keep an extra tension on the dongle, it is not a usb thumb.