Installing STARTER V4.4 Help Files for SINAMICS Drives

Siemens STARTER (STARTER Commissioning Tool) V4.4 is the standard commissioning, parameterization, and diagnostic software for the SINAMICS drive family — including G110, G120, G120D, G130, G150, S110, S120, S150, and MV drives. The Help documentation is shipped as a separate component to keep the executable package compact, and is delivered in a multi-volume archive that must be extracted into a single shared target directory before any setup is started. This article provides the complete, field-proven procedure to install both the STARTER Help and the SSP (Startdrive/SINAMICS Support Package) Help, and to resolve the four most common installation failures that engineers report in production environments.

1. Overview of STARTER V4.4 and the Help Packages

STARTER V4.4 (current Hotfix level: V4.4 HF3) is distributed by Siemens Industry Online Support as a multi-volume ZIP set. The package is split because the uncompressed install tree exceeds 4 GB, which exceeds the size limit of the older Siemens download infrastructure. Each ZIP volume is roughly 1 GB. The contents of the Help subsystem are split across two distinct installers:

2. Prerequisites

Before downloading or installing the Help subsystem, verify the following engineering workstation requirements:

• Operating system: Windows 7 SP1 (32/64-bit), Windows 10 (64-bit build 1607 or higher), or Windows Server 2012 R2. STARTER V4.4 is not certified for Windows 11 without the HF3 patch; consult the SINAMICS MICROMASTER STARTER V4.4 HF3 delivery release for the current OS matrix.
• Framework: .NET Framework 4.6.2 or higher, plus the Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable (x86 and x64).
• Disk space: 4.5 GB free for the extracted multi-volume tree, plus 1.5 GB for the installed Help files (STARTER Help: ~700 MB; SSP Help: ~800 MB).
• User rights: Local administrator for the install only; runtime can be a standard user.
• Browser/Portal access: Siemens Industry Online Support account (support.industry.siemens.com) for the multi-volume download.
• Archive tool: Any tool that preserves NTFS long path support (WinRAR 6.x, 7-Zip 22.x, or Windows native ZIP). Avoid extracting with PowerShell Expand-Archive on paths longer than 260 characters.

3. Downloading the STARTER V4.4 Package

Navigate to Product Support → Drive Technology → Selection and Engineering Tools → STARTER Commissioning Tool, or use the direct entry ID 26233208 in the Siemens support portal. The download selection exposes three install variants:

4. The Shared-Target-Directory Rule

The three (or four) ZIP volumes are designed to be unzipped into a single shared directory — not into three sibling directories. This is the architectural reason that the installer tree is split: each volume contains a partial set of the expected subdirectories, and the setup program scans the parent directory at runtime to discover them.

4.1 Choosing the Target Path

The path that you choose for the shared target directory must not contain any spaces. This is a hard-coded requirement of the legacy InstallShield engine used by STARTER V4.4. The following are forbidden:

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Siemens\Staging\ — fails (spaces around x86)
• C:\Users\John Doe\Downloads\Starter\ — fails (space in username)
• C:\My Documents\Staging\ — fails (space in My Documents)

Recommended staging paths:

• C:\Siemens\StarterV44\
• D:\Staging\STARTER44\
• E:\Engineering\StarterV44_HF3\

The path must also remain under 200 characters after extraction. Paths above 260 characters trigger the "current path too long" error, even though the Windows MAX_PATH limit of 260 is technically the boundary. The InstallShield scanner truncates its internal buffer earlier than the OS, so a path of 230-250 characters will fail while the user sees the path length as acceptable.

4.2 Expected Directory Structure

After extracting all volumes into the shared target, the directory tree must look exactly as follows for the Complete variant. The order of subdirectories is irrelevant; their presence is not.

\...\GemeinsamesVerzeichnis\
  01_Readme\
  CD_1\
  CD_2\
  CD_3\
  SSP_BT\
  SSP_DCM\
  SSP_FAMILY\
  SSP_G110_G120\
  SSP_HELP\
  SSP_MV\
  SSP_SIMOTION_INTEGRATED\
  SSP_SINUMERIK_INTEGRATED\
  Unsupported Tools\

For the Minimal variant (2 ZIPs), the CD_3\ and SSP directories other than SSP_HELP\ are absent. For the Complete + SinuTrain variant, an additional SSP_SINUTRAIN\ directory is present.

5. Installing STARTER (Main Application)

1. Open the shared target directory in Windows Explorer.
2. Navigate to CD_1\ and double-click SETUP.EXE. Run as administrator.
3. Select the language for both the installer UI and the runtime UI (e.g., English, German, Chinese — these are independent selections).
4. Accept the license agreement (Siemens Standard EULA, dated per release).
5. On the Installation Type screen, choose Complete unless disk space is critical. Custom mode is for embedded PCs and excludes documentation.
6. If you downloaded the Complete variant and the setup detects the SSP_*\ directories in the parent, the corresponding SSPs are automatically registered. Otherwise you will be prompted for each SSP.
7. Click Install. The progress bar takes 8-15 minutes on a modern workstation.
8. Reboot if prompted. The STARTER installation creates two services: SINAMICS Helper Service and STARTER Routing Service (used for PROFINET/PROFIBUS device discovery).

6. Installing the STARTER Help

If the initial setup was run from a Minimal download or if the Help checkbox was deselected, the STARTER Help must be installed in a second pass. There is no standalone "Help only" ZIP; you must re-run the same SETUP.EXE and use the maintenance/modify mode.

1. Launch CD_1\SETUP.EXE again (or use Control Panel → Programs and Features → STARTER → Change).
2. The installer detects the existing installation and enters Maintenance Mode.
3. Select Modify → expand the Documentation node → check STARTER Help (English/German/etc.) → click Next.
4. Confirm and complete. The Help files are written to %ProgramFiles%\Siemens\Automation\STARTER\Help\ and registered in the Windows Help store under the namespace Siemens.SINAMICS.STARTER.Help.
5. Verify that STARTER.chm is present and > 200 MB (size is a quick integrity check).

7. Installing the SSP Help

Once STARTER Help is registered, the SSP_HELP\ subdirectory of the shared target contains a dedicated Setup.exe that installs the firmware-specific help for all the SSPs present in the staging tree.

1. Navigate to the shared target directory (e.g., C:\Siemens\StarterV44\).
2. Open SSP_HELP\ and double-click Setup.exe. Run as administrator.
3. The installer scans for installed STARTER Help. If found, it proceeds. If not, it aborts with the dependency error described in Section 1.
4. Select the languages (English mandatory; German, Italian, French, Spanish, Chinese optional).
5. Select the SSPs to install. The list is pre-populated based on the SSP_*\ directories found in the parent. A typical Complete install yields:
   • SSP_BT (SINAMICS Basic Technology)
   • SSP_DCM (DC Master)
   • SSP_FAMILY (cross-SINAMICS documentation)
   • SSP_G110_G120 (G110/G120/G120C parameter help)
   • SSP_MV (Medium Voltage drives)
   • SSP_SIMOTION_INTEGRATED (SIMOTION-coupled drives)
   • SSP_SINUMERIK_INTEGRATED (SINUMERIK-coupled drives)
6. Click Install. Typical install time: 4-8 minutes.
7. The Help collection is registered in STARTER.chw (compiled help workspace) and is now reachable via F1 in STARTER.

8. Verification

After both Help installations complete, perform the following five verification checks:

1. F1 test: Launch STARTER, open any project, select a SINAMICS drive in the project tree, and press F1. A Help window should open with the parameter description of the selected object.
2. File presence: Confirm the following files exist on disk:
   • %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Siemens\Automation\STARTER\Help\STARTER.chm (≥ 200 MB)
   • %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Siemens\Automation\STARTER\Help\SSP\<SSP_name>\<language>\*.chm
3. Registry keys: Open regedit and confirm:
   • HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Siemens\Automation\STARTER\<version>\Help exists with value Installed=1
   • HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Siemens\SINAMICS\Help lists each installed SSP by GUID.
4. Fault/alarm help: Open a drive's fault buffer, right-click a fault code (e.g., F07801), and select Help. The fault description should open in the contextual Help viewer.
5. Function diagram: Open any expert parameter (e.g., p0840), press F1, and confirm that a function-diagram image (typically a 1xxx or 2xxx series number from the SINAMICS function diagram manual) appears inline.

9. Troubleshooting Common Errors

The four errors reported most frequently in the field are summarized below. Each row includes the verbatim error text, the root cause, and the corrective action.

10. SINUMERIK and Hotfix 3 Special Considerations

Engineers commissioning SINAMICS drives that are integrated into a SINUMERIK 840D sl or SINUMERIK ONE controller must apply STARTER V4.4 HF3 rather than the base V4.4 release. The HF3 patch resolves a known conflict where a previously installed SINUMERIK Hotfix 3 version of STARTER would lock the registry keys for the SSP Help installer, causing the dependency check to fail even when STARTER Help is present.

The corrective procedure for SINUMERIK environments is:

1. Uninstall any prior STARTER for SINUMERIK build (the Windows installer keeps the registry GUIDs even after file removal).
2. Install STARTER V4.4 base from the standard 3-volume set.
3. Apply the HF3 patch from the V4.4 HF3 delivery release page (the patch is a single ~80 MB MSI).
4. Install STARTER Help via the modify-mode procedure described in Section 6.
5. Install SSP_HELP\Setup.exe as described in Section 7.

11. Field-Proven Best Practices

• Stage once, image many: Extract the multi-volume set to a network share at \\fileserver\Siemens\STARTER_V44_HF3\ and use that as the install source for every engineering workstation. This guarantees identical SSP selections across the team.
• Disable Windows Search indexing on the install directory. The Help .chw/.chi index files are large and the Windows Indexer will hold write locks that interfere with maintenance-mode installs.
• Document the build hash. After install, export the file list with Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 and archive it with the project. Help content changes are tied to specific SSP build IDs (visible in Help → About in STARTER).
• Keep the staging directory read-only after install. This prevents accidental "run setup from a partially modified tree" scenarios when engineers double-click the staged SETUP.EXE months later.
• Use the Unsupported Tools\ directory carefully. It contains diagnostic utilities (e.g., Trace Viewer, DriveLibCheck) that are not part of the supported STARTER release. Do not run them in production environments without Siemens approval.
• On Windows 10 1909 and later, enable .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 via Turn Windows features on or off before installing STARTER. The Help engine still uses .NET 2.0-era COM interop that requires the legacy runtime as a compatibility shim.

12. Frequently Asked Questions