[Eeglablist] AMICA errors on Win 11

[Grace Harvie]

Hi Daria, Yahya, and Jason,

Thanks very much for the help.

Daria - It was your suggestion to check the working directory which did it - despite changing the path when moving the file, Matlab was still working from root C:/. Changing the working directory to the location of the eeg.set file solved the issue, and both your test script and AMICA now run without issues.

Yahya - Thanks for letting me know the python implementation. I wasn't aware of it and it's nice to know there's an alternative if I run into additional problems.

Jason - The dataset is saved prior to running AMICA - specifically, this dataset had just been saved following referencing with fullRankAveRef(). I'm not sure why AMICA wants to write to a temporary file as the In File field is prefilled with the correct path, and even though it now runs without issue, it still writes to a temporary file:

> No datfile field found in EEG structure. Will write temp file.
> Writing data file: C:\[...]\tmpdata90579.fdt

I inspected the EEG structure through the MATLAB workspace, and there is no value assigned to EEG.datfile prior to AMICA, so I assume this is an idiosyncrasy of the data I'm working with.

(I have included both Daria's and Yahya's emails below, as I didn't think they we passed onto the list, and the advice included may benefit someone searching the list in future.)

Many thanks,
Grace Harvie

PhD Candidate, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney

Research Assistant, Brain Dynamics Centre, Westmead Institute for Medical Research

176 Hawkesbury Road | PO Box 412 | Westmead NSW 2145 Australia
ghar8070 at uni.sydney.edu.au
westmeadinstitute.org.au


This email is private and confidential to the intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not copy it, circulate it or take any action in reliance on it. Kindly notify me that it has been misdirected and then delete it. Thank you.


________________________________
From: Daria Agafonova <agafonovadaria97 at gmail.com>
Sent: 17 September 2026 05:38
To: Grace Harvie <ghar8070 at uni.sydney.edu.au>
Subject: [Eeglablist] AMICA errors on Win 11

Hi Grace,

The `fwrite` error suggests that the preceding `fopen` failed to
create the temporary data file. This happens before the AMICA
executable is launched, so I would investigate the MATLAB working
directory and write access first, rather than the MPI libraries.

In `runamica15`, numeric input is written to a temporary `.fdt` file
in MATLAB’s current working directory (`pwd`). Moving the `.set` file
out of OneDrive does not necessarily change that directory.

Could you check:

pwd
which runamica15 -all

Then try this small write-access test in the same MATLAB session:

testfile = [tempname(pwd) '.fdt'];
[fid, msg] = fopen(testfile, 'w');

if fid == -1
    fprintf('Could not create a file:\n%s\n%s\n', testfile, msg);
else
    fclose(fid);
    delete(testfile);
    disp('File creation succeeded.');
end

If this fails, the message should help identify why MATLAB cannot
create the file. Try switching MATLAB’s Current Folder to a local
folder that you own and can write to, outside OneDrive, ideally with a
short path without spaces, and then repeat the test and AMICA run.

If the write test succeeds but AMICA still fails, could you share the
`Writing data file: ...` line printed immediately before the error,
together with the output of `which runamica15 -all`? That would help
distinguish a path/access issue from another installed copy of the
wrapper being called.

Since the executable already runs from PowerShell, I would check this
first before considering a separate Linux installation.

Best,
Daria



________________________________
From: Seyed Yahya Shirazi <shirazi at ieee.org>
Sent: 17 September 2026 08:17
To: Grace Harvie <ghar8070 at uni.sydney.edu.au>
Subject: [Eeglablist] AMICA errors on Win 11


Hi Grace,

We made  pAmica, a python version for AMICA that has both python native and fortran implementations, with a python.

If you don't want to use python, you can still download the binary for Windows from pAmica repo release page:  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/sccn/pAMICA/releases/tag/v0.3.3__;!!Mih3wA!Fqo58WM0ijoaxwiUaXiqtrkwNw3xrnwBEeugrWBTyIOEqYmZD1JaKkn-2clV_5Yq85K3Oc3IlPDi8kIWCfJJLhOHlF3JFLeU$ . It does not have mpi dependency and might run more easily.

Best
Yahya

Sent from a handheld device, sorry for typos 🙂.