Win10 Woes?

[DavidLJ]

For quite some time I've been using a Quantum motorised filter wheel with Win7 on my 64bit laptop. Quantum as a brand no longer exists it having been taken over by Orion who re-badged the filter wheel as a Nautilus. As of now it seems that Orion no longer sells the Nautilus.


I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to Win10 just before the free deadline. Most everything seems to work well with the exception of the filter wheel. When the filter wheel is plugged in, the internal carousel still audibly spins around to its starting position and the connected laptop kind-of recognises its existence (see first image attached). But even so it doesn't connect so as to be recognised by controlling software. And Ascom bombs out with it when using the 32 bit connection option saying “Filter Wheel NOT found” (see second image attached). Trying the 64 bit connection option produces a message saying that the 32bit driver won't work in a 64bit application (see third image attached). Needless to say, I've spent some considerable time playing around with the Devices and Printers settings for the “device” including searching for an updated driver but all to no avail. I suspect that the filter wheel may need a new Win10 compatible driver but when I contacted Orion to see if they can help the reply that came back was :


“I’m sorry to say that the latest drivers that were introduced for the Nautilus is for Windows 8. It would be best to run an emulator or to use an older computer for this purpose if possible.”


Not exactly what I wanted to hear. Without a filter wheel to support the imaging mono camera in the observatory, all of the equipment there becomes just so much expensive junk! All for the want of a new driver? If I have to, I guess I'll have to buy a new filter wheel. But that is an expensive option that I'd very much prefer to avoid. Particularly as the existing filter wheel is mechanically sound and works (well used to work) very well.


If you have had the patience to read this far, I wonder if anyone can offer a way of pulling this particular chestnut out of the fire by suggesting how the existing driver might be made to work with the Quantum filter wheel in the new Win10 environment? Any advice would be very much appreciated.


Thanks


David

[Shiraz]

no idea if it will help, but could be worth a read - different hardware, but the same maker.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/archive/index.php/t-136367.html

[garymck]

It is worth trying to reinstall the driver as what is known as an "unsigned driver". The procedure for this can be found for this here:

http://en.code-bude.net/2015/08/19/how-to-install-unsigned-drivers-in-windows-10/

I have only found one (medical) device that I couldn't get to work using this method (p....d off when the program cost me $7000).

hope this helps...

Gary

[DavidLJ]

Thanks Ray and Gary. I'll study both of your linked documents to see what I can make of them. Very grateful for your replies.

David

[silv]

That's sad.
But a common problem with OS upgrades.

If your research doesn't lead to a native Win10 solution, consider dual boot or virtualisation (if your computer is powerful enough) of Win7.
You still own the OEM Win7 license that came with the machine. So that shouldn't be a problem.

It's really a common upgrade problem with expensive hard- and software and going back to the working version until circumstances justify replacement is often the only solution.

[White Rabbit]

I have the Orion 4x2" filter wheel and the only advice I can give you is this...if you can afford it throw the filter wheel in the bin and get another one.
I've never been able to get the 64bit drive to work properly.

Here is what made it work for me.

I had to go into the device manager and force feed the driver to the wheel. It still wouldn't work until I physically unplug and replug the wheel in. Every time I would do a session I would need to wait until the pc would boot then plug it in wait for nothing to happen then disconnect the wheel and plug it back it. I would work just fine after that.
This is a work around and worked for me but it really sucks if you are remote and need to reboot, you loose the use of your wheel.

Good luck.