Tuesday, February 02, 2010

How To Fix Sigmira

Sigmira is a popular and free Windows program that does a nice job on several digital modes, notably the difficult STANAG 4285 (a form of 8-ary 2400-symbol/sec phase-shift keying used by many NATO militaries). It's a neat little package written by a knowledgeable guy.

Unfortunately, Sigmira has developed a problem of unknown origin. Here, STANAG 4285 simply stopped working. Clicking the button in the menu did nothing. Others have had an error message relating to a "control window not available," even though it had been available the last time the program was run.

The programmer is aware of the issue and has a fix that has so far worked for myself and everyone I know of who has done it. It is necessary to replace a config file in Sigmira's home folder called features.dat so that the missing features become available again.

Go to (Sigmira's web page), and scroll down. You'll see the following:

2010/1/26
The features.dat file needs to be replaced. The replacement can be obtained here: features.dat Place it at /bin/features.dat.

Click the link (which will be available on the web page) and replace the defective features.dat in the directory mentioned. Start up Sigmira and watch it work right.