Resolving WinCC 7.4 SP1 to TIA Portal V15 Migration Failure

Resolving WinCC 7.4 SP1 to TIA Portal V15 Migration Failure

The migration path from WinCC 7.4 SP1 (the classic WinCC / WinCC Explorer based on the Windows runtime) into WinCC Professional V15 inside the TIA Portal is a documented but notoriously fragile operation. A common symptom is the silent failure of the Migration to TIA Portal V15 tool with the message failed to migrate source project, with no log file being produced and the tool exiting before any conversion activity is logged. This article documents the root cause (Windows regional / non-Unicode language settings), the field-verified workaround, and the complete set of supporting procedures that allow the migration to complete cleanly.

1. Problem Description

Engineers who have carried a long-lived classic WinCC project (originally authored in WinCC 7.0 or 7.2) through several upgrades to WinCC 7.4 SP1 often attempt to move the project into the TIA Portal ecosystem so they can reuse HMI screens, tags, alarms and scripts inside a unified engineering environment. The conversion is performed with the standalone tool "Migration to TIA Portal V15", which is shipped with TIA Portal V15 (or available from Siemens Online Support as a separate package). On a healthy project, the tool creates a new TIA Portal V15 project, copies converted HMI objects, and writes a migration log into the target project directory.

The failure mode reported in the field is as follows:

• The user opens the original 7.4 SP1 project in WinCC Explorer and runs the menu command Project > Migrator from a higher version (in this case 7.5 / 7.5 SP1) or, more commonly, launches the standalone Siemens Migration to TIA Portal V15 tool directly.
• The tool returns immediately with the dialog failed to migrate source project.
• No migrated project is created in the target path.
• No log file is generated by the migration tool.
• Re-running with elevated privileges, on a different workstation, or after a fresh project duplication produces the same result.

The same engineering workstation can migrate other 7.4 SP1 projects successfully, which confirms the problem is project-specific or workstation-environment specific, not a corrupt TIA Portal install.

2. Root Cause Analysis

The root cause is the Windows Regional and Language Options setting used on the engineering workstation, specifically the combination of:

• The Format (location) — for example Turkish (Turkey), German (Germany) with non-default number / date separators, or any locale that uses comma , as the decimal separator.
• The Language for non-Unicode programs (system locale) — commonly Turkish (Turkey) or any non-English code page.

The migration tool reads the source project metadata, parses internal database fields, and serializes them into the new TIA Portal project format. When the system locale is non-English, the COM / .NET interop layer in the migration tool applies the system code page to strings, which can silently change capitalization rules and character handling. The most common failure is the Turkish I / ı / İ / i case-folding problem: classic WinCC stores internal object identifiers and folder names that contain the literal capital-I and lowercase-i, and when the migration tool normalizes them under the Turkish locale the resulting identifier collides with an existing entry in the new TIA Portal project tree, raising an unhandled exception during the very first project-creation step. Because the failure happens before the migration runtime is fully initialized, no log is written.

The user who originally reported the issue confirmed the diagnosis by changing the regional settings to English (United States) in both the Format and the Language for non-Unicode programs fields, after which the migration completed without any code change. Siemens support officially references the same configuration requirement in entry 109751898 — Information about the migration of WinCC V7.x to TIA Portal.

3. Required Siemens Components and Versions

Confirm the following components are installed before attempting migration. The compatibility matrix below is the field-verified set used in production projects.

4. Pre-Migration Checklist

Complete each item before launching the migration tool. The checklist is intentionally short — every item on it has been the sole cause of a reported field failure.

1. Close all open WinCC Explorer and TIA Portal instances.
2. Stop the WinCC Explorer service and the CCAgent service on the engineering station.
3. Take a full file-system backup of the source project folder (typically C:\Program Files (x86)\Siemens\WinCC\WinCCProjects\<ProjectName>) and the corresponding SQL Server databases CC_<ProjectName>_<TS>.
4. Open Control Panel > Region > Administrative and verify:
   • Current language for non-Unicode programs = English (United States)
   • System locale = English (United States)
5. Open Control Panel > Region and set Format to English (United States) for the duration of the migration. You may revert this setting for your user session after migration completes.
6. Confirm that no folder or file in the project tree contains non-ASCII characters in its name.
7. Confirm the project opens cleanly in WinCC Explorer without the "Project is already up-to-date" dialog being triggered erroneously.
8. Run a Save As duplicator pass on the source project (see Section 5).

5. Source Project Preparation

Even after the regional settings are correct, the source 7.4 SP1 project must be in a state the migration tool can read. The Project Duplicator inside WinCC Explorer is the recommended pre-processor because it produces a clean, fully-closed copy that has no live SQL connections, no redundant database snapshots, and (crucially) no locale-corrupted string artifacts from prior in-place upgrades.

5.1 Run the Project Duplicator

1. Open WinCC Explorer on the source workstation (not yet on the migration target).
2. Right-click the project node and select Project Duplicator > Save As.
3. Choose a new project name. If the original name is reused, the duplicator writes into the same path and may inherit existing corrupted artifacts.
4. Select Save As (Compact) — this compacts the project database, removes the change log, and forces a full re-serialization of every object.
5. Wait for the duplicator to report Project successfully saved and the elapsed time stamp.
6. Open the duplicated project in WinCC Explorer on the same workstation. The project must open without warnings.

5.2 Optional Intermediate Upgrade

If the project was originally authored in WinCC 7.0 or 7.2, the field-tested upgrade path is:

1. Open in WinCC 7.2 → save.
2. Open in WinCC 7.3 → save.
3. Open in WinCC 7.4 SP1 → run Convert All Objects from the WinCC Explorer Tools menu.
4. Run Project Duplicator → Save As (Compact) with a new name.
5. Attempt the migration to TIA Portal V15.

Each Convert All Objects pass re-serializes a portion of the project under the current build's internal rules. Skipping the WinCC 7.3 step is a known cause of the migration tool silently refusing to read the project.

6. Step-by-Step Migration Procedure

1. Reboot the engineering workstation after the regional settings have been changed. A simple sign-out / sign-in is not sufficient: the migration tool's COM activation is loaded by the system code page, which is only re-read at boot.
2. Verify the new locale is active: open cmd.exe and type chcp. The response must be Active code page: 437 or Active code page: 1252 (English). A response of 857 or 1254 means the change did not take effect.
3. Launch Siemens Automation > Migration Tool > Migration to TIA Portal V15 as Administrator.
4. In the source dialog, browse to the duplicated project (typically under C:\Program Files (x86)\Siemens\WinCC\WinCCProjects\<ProjectName>).
5. In the target dialog, select an empty directory. Do not point the tool at an existing TIA Portal project — it always creates a new one.
6. Click Migrate. The tool first opens the source project, then performs a schema validation pass, then creates the TIA Portal V15 project tree.
7. Watch the progress bar. If it advances past 5 % without an error, the project has been accepted by the tool and the migration runtime is active.
8. When the tool reports Migration completed successfully, open the TIA Portal V15 and verify the migrated project opens.

6.1 What the Log Tells You

After a successful migration, the log file is written to the target project directory:

<TargetProject>\Logs\Siemens.Automation.MigrationFramework.log

The file is a rolling, plain-text log. Levels used by the tool are Information, Warning, and Error. Lines of interest during verification:

INFO  Source project opened: C:\WinCC\...\MyPlant.mcp
INFO  Source project version: 7.4 SP1 Update 12
INFO  Target project created at: C:\TIA\MyPlant_V15.ap15
WARN  <ObjectName> — unsupported property '<Property>' discarded
WARN  Global script <ModuleName> — VBS->C conversion required (open in editor and review)
ERROR Conversion of <ObjectName> failed: <Reason>

A clean migration shows no ERROR lines. The presence of WARN lines is normal and does not block the migration; each warning identifies a feature that requires manual post-migration review in the TIA Portal editor.

7. Post-Migration Verification

Open the migrated project in TIA Portal V15 and run the following checks. They map 1:1 to the sections of a 7.4 SP1 project that the migration tool may have converted imperfectly.

8. Troubleshooting Matrix

9. Field Notes and Caveats

• No log means pre-runtime failure. The migration tool initializes its log handler after it has read the source project metadata. If the tool cannot read the metadata, the log file is never created. Always check the system locale before searching for a missing log.
• Display language is not the system locale. Many engineers change the Windows display language to English but leave the non-Unicode system locale in its original language. The TIA Portal V15 migration tool checks the system locale, not the display language.
• The Duplicator helps but is not a substitute for the locale change. Running the Project Duplicator with Save As (Compact) can clean up a project that was upgraded in place on a non-English workstation, but it does not repair identifiers that have already been corrupted during prior case-folding. A clean migration requires both a duplicator pass and an English system locale.
• Reversibility. After the migration has completed, you can revert the regional settings to your preferred locale. The migrated TIA Portal V15 project does not depend on the engineering workstation's locale.
• Network share targets. Pointing the target directory at a UNC path (e.g. \\fileserver\projects\...) sometimes masks the locale problem because the COM layer's authentication step fails earlier with a different error code. Always migrate to a local drive first; only copy the finished project to a share afterwards.
• Antivirus interaction. Several corporate antivirus suites quarantine files inside newly created TIA Portal project directories on first write. The migration tool may report a generic failed to migrate if a quarantine event removes a temporary file. Add the target path to the antivirus exclusion list before migration.
• UAC and Admin rights. The migration tool writes to Program Files (x86)\Siemens\WinCC\WinCCProjects and to %ProgramData%\Siemens\Automation\. A non-elevated launch will fail at the first write and produce no log. Always launch with Run as administrator.

10. Summary of the Field-Confirmed Fix

The complete, ordered fix is:

1. Open Control Panel > Region > Administrative.
2. Click Change system locale....
3. Select English (United States).
4. Check the box Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support only if your Windows build supports it and TIA Portal V15 has been tested under that setting; otherwise leave unchecked.
5. Click OK and reboot.
6. Open Control Panel > Region, set Format to English (United States).
7. Reboot again (the format change can be applied to the current user without reboot, but the migration tool reads the system-level format).
8. Re-run the Migration to TIA Portal V15 tool against the duplicated source project.

The original reporter confirmed this sequence resolved the failure and produced a valid TIA Portal V15 project. The same sequence is recommended in Siemens support entry 109751898 — Information about the migration of WinCC V7.x to TIA Portal.

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