Onity is one of just a couple of companies in the world that manufactures and installs keycard encoding systems for the hospitality industry. My organization’s hospitality division uses the Onity HT24 system for our guest room doors, and when they installed the system, they had us set up a Windows 7 box to serve as a server, and a couple of Windows 7 boxes to serve as workstations at our two “front desk” areas. Becoming aware that Windows 7 support will sunset on 1/14/20, my team began looking for a way to get Onity running on Windows 10. The process I lay out here is NOT OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED by Onity, so use at your own risk.
Before figuring this out on my own, I contacted Onity support and they expressed that they have no roadmap for adding Windows 10 support their HT24 product, so your options when 1/14/20 rolls around is either to migrate using the process I describe here, or isolate your HT24 computers so they aren’t able to access the internet and risk exploitation of the security holes which will no doubt be discovered and remain unpatched. Or, obviously, to replace your system with their latest product which is Windows 10 compatible.
Step 1: Familiarize yourself with your current setup
Take a look at the configuration of your current server and workstation(s). If your setup is like mine, you have a c:\onity folder on your server, and an analogous folder on your workstation. Your server has the standard Windows user accounts and also an account called Tech whose password is specific to your property, and an account called User whose password is user (yeah, I know.) You’ll notice that the same accounts exist on your workstation(s). Do a bit of testing to make sure you know the passwords for the User and Tech accounts…you’ll need them later.
I have to stress the importance of this step. I failed to familiarize myself as much as I should have with the “status quo” of my setup, and I spent time beating my head against permission issues before I finally got things working.
Step 2: Install Borland Paradox Runtime on your new Windows 10 machine
The Borland Paradox Runtime allows the HT24 software to run on your 64-bit Windows 10 workstation. Without this, the software will start up, tell you the database is in use by another user, and immediately shut down.
Use your Google-fu to find Paradox Runtime. I use Paradox 10 runtime, but I believe other versions would work. Be careful to find a “safe” download of it; some sites bundle crapware with it (I actually downloaded it from such a site but opted out of all the crapware when prompted.)
Note that there’s no need to start up the Paradox Runtime - it merely needs to be installed on your machine.
Step 3: Copy the C:\ONITY folder from existing workstation
You cannot “install” HT24 onto a Windows 10 machine - if you attempt to run the installation, it’ll fail. The good news is that HT24 is a portable program - it doesn’t have to be installed in order to work. So, do a straight copy of c:\ONITY from your existing workstation to your new Windows 10 workstation. You should now have a c:\ONITY folder on your Windows 10 box.
Since it’s a straight copy of the working configuration from your existing workstation, this will keep you from having to mess with any configuration or ini files to get it working on your new machine, except for one little tidbit which we’ll get into next.
You could accomplish the copy through your network between your existing workstation and your new Windows 10 machine. Or, you could use a USB thumbdrive. It’s less than 50mb of data.
Step 4: Set up credentials in Windows 10 Credential Manager
Your existing Onity workstation is most likely using the account User at login - it may even be set up to auto-login when booted, so you haven’t been having to manually login at boot. Presumably, your new Windows 10 workstation might be domain-joined or have an existing user account, and you don’t want to have a separate user account on the machine in order to use Onity. So, you need to tell Windows what credentials to use when accessing the server.
Go into Windows 10 credential manager, click Windows Credentials, and then create a new Windows Credential by clicking “Add a Windows Credential.” Enter the name of your Onity server for the server name (in my case it was ht28_server), and then enter the credentials your workstation has been using - in my case, and I would guess most cases, this is user/user. Then click OK.
As a test, confirm you can go to your server in file explorer without being prompted to enter credentials…so, \ht28_server\ would be the path in the default configuration.
Step 5: Adjust the ht28 - shortcut properties, part 1
In your new workstation, look in your c:\ONITY\HT28v3 folder. You should see a shortcut called “HT28 - Shortcut”. This is the shortcut you use on your original workstation to start up the software. Right click the shortcut and choose properties. There are two things you need to work on here.
First, adjust the target field. It will probably look something like this:
C:\ONITY\HT28v3\HT28.exe /d\ht28_server\data /s2
There are two command line switches here. The /d switch tells the software where the database is located. If you haven’t moved the database, i.e., the items on the server, then leave this switch alone. If you do move the server responsibilities to a new location, then you’ll need to change the path after /d accordingly so HT24 can find the database.
The /s switch allows the HT24 software to identify itself to the server as to which workstation it is. Each computer running Onity must have a unique /s switch - so if you already have /s1 and /s2, and you’re adding two more workstations, make them /s3 and /s4. I believe this ensures that the server knows how to communicate with the encoders physically connected to each of your workstations, and if the /s switches weren’t unique, it would get confused about which encoder you actually want to use to encode a keycard.
Step 6: Adjust the ht28 - shortcut properties, part 2
Next up, click that “Advanced” button in the properties. In Onity’s default setup, the “Run as Administrator” checkbox will be ticked. The important thing to know: you don’t have to run the HT24 software as an admin. And you don’t want to, because if you do, the software will attempt to use your admin credentials to connect to the server, rather than the user/user you set up in step 4…and it will not work!!
So uncheck that box, click OK and OK.
Step 7: Start up HT24
Launch HT24 from the HT28 - Shortcut. It should start up and function the same as your original workstation in the “official” configuration from Onity. Click around a bit in some of the usual areas and confirm that the software is running as expected.
Step 8: Connect your encoder(s)
You encoder(s) are still connected to your original Onity workstation at this point. Go ahead and disconnect that serial cable from the back of the Onity workstation and connect it to the serial port on your new Windows 10 workstation computer. Now, you have to tell the software that your encoder(s) are connected to the new computer.
To do this, make sure you are logged into HT24 under your tech password. Your tech password seems to normally be some variation on your Onity customer ID number. Once you’re in, go to Maintenance–>Peripheral Diagnosis. You’ll see your encoders listed. Whichever ones you have just plugged into your new Windows 10 machine will be shown with a red dot beside them, indicating the software can’t find them.
All you need to do is click each encoder physically attached to your Windows 10 machine and then click the Make Local button at the bottom of the window. After a few seconds, the dot beside the encoder will turn green, and that means you’re ready to do a test encode of a card or two…it should work great.
If you have 2 encoders daisy-chained to the same workstation computer, then you can introduce another workstation which can use your LAN to communicate with one of the encoders…but of important note, it can only communicate with encoder 1. So, make sure encoder 1 is the one which is physically closer to the second workstation. Also, the HT24 software has to be running on the machine the encoders are physically connected to in order to encode keys from another workstation through your LAN.
Our next step here at my organization is to determine whether we want to simply P to V the server box and then isolate it from the internet, but keep it on Windows 7 so we won’t be as far outside of Onity’s “officially supported” configuration, versus migrating the server to Windows 10. We think we know how to make the server work on Windows 10…it’s just a matter of getting the configuration of permissions right.
I hope this is helpful to anyone who has responsibility for an Onity keycard system and who’s concerned about the end of Windows 7 support coming up in just less than a year.
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