LewisM
10-10-2013, 09:46 AM
After numerous frustrations with PHD for many months, I finally resolved the issue - it was corrupted DLL's.
I had installed the latest PHD without removing the old PHD. For some reason, this seems to have corrupted or caused mishandling of the PHD commands. I completely unistalled ALL versions recently, and scrubbed the registry thoroughly of ANY PHD DLL's etc.
I ran it again as a test when I was about to shut down for the night at 1am after guiding with MaxIM for the past 4 hours flawlessly. Well, PHD locked on, and stayed locked, so I let it run. Got up at 2am and it was still locked on NGC 908 :) Changed targets, went to bed again, and got up at 4am but this time I saw to my horror that my computer had done a system upgrade automatically and restarted - OUCH! Still managed almost 1 hour on B33.
So, to Craig Stark, I apologise for any bad press I gave PHD. It works a treat. Advice to users is if you upgrade and get issues, ALWAYS fully delete the old files and registry entries. Most programmes these days don't require it, but perhaps sometimes it is the root of some issues.
I must also say how simply incredible the Vixen GPD2 is. It sat there for almost 1 hour, tracking by itself with no guidance from anything but the Synscan system, and it was still dead centre on Alnitak! BIG thumbs up to the precision of Vixen and the Synscan GOTO kit!
I had installed the latest PHD without removing the old PHD. For some reason, this seems to have corrupted or caused mishandling of the PHD commands. I completely unistalled ALL versions recently, and scrubbed the registry thoroughly of ANY PHD DLL's etc.
I ran it again as a test when I was about to shut down for the night at 1am after guiding with MaxIM for the past 4 hours flawlessly. Well, PHD locked on, and stayed locked, so I let it run. Got up at 2am and it was still locked on NGC 908 :) Changed targets, went to bed again, and got up at 4am but this time I saw to my horror that my computer had done a system upgrade automatically and restarted - OUCH! Still managed almost 1 hour on B33.
So, to Craig Stark, I apologise for any bad press I gave PHD. It works a treat. Advice to users is if you upgrade and get issues, ALWAYS fully delete the old files and registry entries. Most programmes these days don't require it, but perhaps sometimes it is the root of some issues.
I must also say how simply incredible the Vixen GPD2 is. It sat there for almost 1 hour, tracking by itself with no guidance from anything but the Synscan system, and it was still dead centre on Alnitak! BIG thumbs up to the precision of Vixen and the Synscan GOTO kit!