Fixing TIA Portal v13 Installation Stuck at 2 Minutes Remaining

Problem Overview

The TIA Portal V13 setup program is one of the most commonly reported failure modes in legacy Siemens engineering environments: the installer reaches a steady-state display of "2 minutes remaining" or "A few seconds remaining," the progress bar stops advancing, and the process never completes. On Windows 7 32-bit hosts with 4 GB of RAM the symptom is identical to the symptom observed on fully spec-compliant Windows 10 64-bit workstations with 16 GB of RAM. The error is therefore not strictly a hardware-resource issue; it is a privilege, UAC, and log-write failure that masquerades as a hardware shortfall.

This article documents the root cause, the verification procedure, the official Siemens fix path, and the deeper engineering workflow that follows once the installer runs to completion. It also covers the hidden-folder log locations, the ProgramData path used by every TIA Portal release from V13 through V20, and the migration path for users who cannot resolve the legacy V13 environment.

Affected Products and Versions

The "stuck at 2 minutes" failure mode has been observed on the following engineering environments:

• STEP 7 V13 / V13 SP1 / V13 SP2 (TIA Portal integrated)
• WinCC V13 / V13 SP1 / V13 SP2 (Professional, Comfort, Advanced)
• Startdrive V13 (SINAMICS Startdrive integration)
• S7-PLCSIM V13 / V13 SP1
• TIA Portal V14, V15, V15.1, V16, V17 — the same UAC-related hang can occur on these versions when the install media is mounted from a non-elevated process on locked-down corporate images.

The currently maintained engineering suite is TIA Portal V20, whose installation prerequisites are documented in the official Siemens TIA Administrator cloud manual at TIA Portal V20 system requirements. Engineers maintaining active projects on V13 should treat the V13 environment as frozen, apply the fix below, and plan a project migration to a supported version when hardware is available.

TIA Portal V13 Minimum Hardware Requirements

Siemens publishes minimum and recommended hardware specifications for each TIA Portal release. For V13 the values below represent the official floor for a usable engineering workstation:

Workstations that meet only the 4 GB / 32-bit minimum can install TIA Portal V13 and perform small PLC programming tasks, but they will exhibit very long compile times, especially for S7-1500 projects and WinCC Comfort runtime generation. The installer itself does not enforce the 8 GB RAM requirement as a hard gate; it merely flags it as a warning. The actual blocker in most "stuck" reports is the privilege escalation failure described later in this article.

Root Cause Analysis

The TIA Portal V13 setup program is implemented as a layered installer: an outer bootstrapper (Setup.exe) launches an inner Microsoft Installer chain that writes configuration data, .NET dependencies, and registry hives into protected system folders. Two specific failure paths produce the "stuck at 2 minutes" symptom.

Cause 1 — Insufficient Privilege for ProgramData Writes

The bootstrapper writes installer telemetry, component state, and rollback data into C:\ProgramData\Siemens\Automation\Logfiles. ProgramData is a hidden system folder owned by the TrustedInstaller system account on Windows 7 and later. A user account that is a member of the local Administrators group but is not the actual built-in Administrator account — for example, a domain user with "Administrator rights" granted through group policy — will be blocked from creating subdirectories under ProgramData when User Account Control (UAC) is enabled and the setup is launched without elevation. The installer therefore cannot write its log, cannot advance its internal state machine, and remains pinned at the last transition. The visible counter does not reset because the installer is still "running"; it is just blocked on a permission-denied filesystem call.

Cause 2 — UAC Virtualization of the Installer Tokens

On 32-bit Windows 7 hosts the UAC virtualization layer can substitute a per-user writeable location for ProgramData, which means the installer appears to write successfully but never reaches the actual system location required for the next step. The same root cause manifests as silent log-file absence: the user looks for the logfile in the redirected virtual store path and cannot find it. The recommended remedy is to launch Setup.exe with a fully elevated token so that UAC virtualization is bypassed and writes go directly to the real ProgramData location.

Cause 3 — Memory Pressure on 32-bit Hosts

Although not the primary cause on most reported incidents, memory pressure can also pin the installer. A 32-bit Windows process is limited to 2 GB of user-mode address space by default. The TIA Portal V13 installer allocates roughly 1.5 GB during the dependency-resolution phase. On a 4 GB / 32-bit host with antivirus and other background services consuming physical memory, the installer can be forced into paging that prevents the dispatch loop from advancing the progress counter, again leaving the user with a "stuck at 2 minutes" display.

Diagnostic Procedure — Read the Siemens Log File

Before applying any fix, retrieve the actual log to confirm which of the three causes is active. The Siemens installer writes a primary log to the ProgramData path even when the GUI appears hung. The location is:

C:\ProgramData\Siemens\Automation\Logfiles\Setup\<timestamp>\Setup.log
C:\ProgramData\Siemens\Automation\Logfiles\Setup\<timestamp>\Siemens.Automation.Setup.log

ProgramData is hidden by default. On Windows 7 enable it through the following steps:

1. Open Control Panel → Appearance and Personalization → Folder Options.
2. If Folder Options is not visible, the user may not have full Administrator rights. Open Control Panel → User Accounts → User Accounts, confirm the account type.
3. Switch to the View tab.
4. Select "Show hidden files, folders, and drives."
5. Uncheck "Hide protected operating system files."
6. Click Apply, then OK.

Once hidden folders are visible, navigate to the log directory and open the most recent timestamped folder. Look for one of the following marker strings:

Resolution — Run Setup.exe as Administrator

The official Siemens fix for the V13 installation hang is to launch the installer with an elevated token. The procedure differs slightly depending on the installer source medium.

Step-by-Step Procedure

1. Close all running instances of TIA Portal, STEP 7, WinCC, and Startdrive.
2. Disable antivirus real-time scanning temporarily; McAfee and Trend Micro have been observed to intercept the installer's writes and silently quarantine MSI rollback scripts in %TEMP%.
3. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the TIA Portal V13 installation media (DVD, USB, or extracted ISO folder).
4. Locate Setup.exe at the root of the media.
5. Right-click Setup.exe and select Run as administrator.
6. When the UAC consent dialog appears, click Yes.
7. The installer should advance past the 2-minute mark within 30 to 90 seconds on a properly elevated process. If the progress counter remains static for more than 5 minutes after elevation, close the installer and consult the diagnostic procedure above.
8. Do not interrupt the installer during the registry-write phase; an interrupted install can leave a half-configured TIA Portal that will fail on the next start with the 0x80004005 unhandled exception.
9. Reboot when prompted. The first reboot is required because several kernel-mode filter drivers (Siemens SIMATIC Diagnostic Driver, S7DOS) are staged during this phase.

Command-Line Equivalent for Silent Deployment

For multi-seat engineering bay rollouts use the elevated command-line form. Open cmd.exe as Administrator and run:

cd /d "D:\TIA_Portal_V13"
Setup.exe /silent /norestart

To suppress the 8 GB RAM warning and force install on a smaller host add the registry override below before launching setup:

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Siemens\Automation\Setup" /v IgnoreRAMCheck /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Verification Procedure

After the installer completes, verify the install with the following checks:

1. Open the Start menu and confirm that Siemens Automation > TIA Portal V13 is listed.
2. Launch TIA Portal V13. The license-free starter mode should display the Portal view with "Create new project" available.
3. From the menu select Help > About. Confirm the build number matches the install media (e.g., V13.0.0.0, V13 SP1 = V13.1.0.0, V13 SP2 = V13.2.0.0).
4. Confirm the SIMATIC diagnostic driver is installed by checking Device Manager → System devices → SIMATIC S7 Diagnostic Driver.
5. Create a new S7-1500 project, add a CPU 1515-2 PN from the catalog, and compile. A successful compile confirms that the integrated S7-PLCSIM, WinCC, and STEP 7 components are all functional.

Recovering from a Failed Installation

If the V13 installer has been interrupted mid-install (system reboot, power loss, forced kill), the next install attempt will fail with a generic "Setup cannot continue" message. Clear the broken state with the following procedure:

1. Reboot into Safe Mode with networking.
2. Open an elevated cmd.exe.
3. Stop the Siemens service set: net stop "Siemens SIMATIC Automation Helper" and net stop "S7TraceServiceSrv".
4. Unregister and re-register the Windows Installer service: msiexec /unregister followed by msiexec /regserver.
5. Delete the residual install state at C:\ProgramData\Siemens\Automation\InstallState and C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Siemens\Automation.
6. Remove leftover registry keys: reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Siemens\Automation" /f (export first for safety).
7. Reboot to normal mode and run Setup.exe elevated as documented above.

Migration to a Supported TIA Portal Version

TIA Portal V13 reached end of active support several years ago. New projects and security patches ship with the current V20 release. For sites that cannot migrate immediately, treat the V13 environment as legacy and isolate the engineering workstation from production networks.

The browser prerequisites for the TIA Administrator web front-end on V20 are documented at TIA Portal V20 system requirements. Any Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Mozilla Firefox version 114 or higher is required for the cloud-based TIA Administrator interface. Local engineering projects do not require a browser, but the same V20 install also brings the SIMATIC Automation Tool, OPC UA server, and updated S7-PLCSIM.

Troubleshooting Matrix

Field-Engineering Notes

When deploying TIA Portal V13 on engineering bays with limited IT administration, the following practices eliminate the bulk of "stuck at 2 minutes" incidents before they occur:

• Always launch Setup.exe from a local NTFS volume; installation from a network share can fail with the same symptoms if the share permissions are not equivalent to local administrator rights.
• Verify that the C:\ProgramData directory is owned by the local Administrators group and not redirected by folder-redirection GPO. Domain profiles in a redirected user profile can lose ProgramData write access at logoff if the offline-files cache fills.
• For Windows 7 32-bit hosts, install only the core STEP 7 V13 set (STEP 7 Professional, S7-PLCSIM). WinCC Professional, Startdrive, and the SIMATIC Motion Control option set require addresses that 32-bit Windows cannot service in a single process; the installer may claim success but the components will be missing at runtime.
• Maintain a known-good system image of a fully installed TIA Portal V13 workstation using a disk-cloning tool such as Clonezilla. Restoring a known-good image is faster than troubleshooting a damaged install in production.
• Keep the Windows Installer service in "Manual" startup rather than "Disabled." Several reported hangs originate in a service-start race where the MSI service is requested by Setup.exe before it has fully started.

FAQ