Frustrating night!

[iceman]

Well some of you may have read about my laptop panic - after having my laptop completely wiped yesterday morning, I needed to get it up and running before last night so I could do some imaging at our local dark sky meetup.

Fortunately, I did get everything up and running on the laptop in time - Windows XP, capture software, etc.

Get out there, start the setup and plug in the DMK21AU04 for guiding, and it's only then when I tried to install the drivers for it, that things started going bad. The software just didn't recognise the camera was being plugged in.

Turns out that it is probably because I only had an old Windows XP SP1, and that the USB2 devices are only recognised in Service Pack 2 - which I didn't have on me :(

So, no webcam, no auto-guiding. I thought I'd just do some manual guiding with the reticle. Try to plug the 350D in, and again, Windows didn't recognise it. Nothing went to plan.

So to try and save something from the beautiful clear night, we just put my friend Derek's Canon 40D + 70-200 IS USM lens on and did some widefield of the LMC and Eta Carinae, just piggybacked on top of the ED80. No guiding.

In the end I think we salvaged some images (they're on his mac laptop at the moment), i'll process them in a few days.

Anyway, now I need to get my Windows XP up to date on the laptop before I can do any more imaging with it.. I'm sorry in advance to those in Sydney/Newcastle, i'm going to be hoping for cloudy nights for a few days :)

[leon]

Gee Mike that was not good, Those nights do happen when every thing just compounds and things get from bad to worse, hope it all comes together for you soon.

Leon

[xelasnave]

I have had my DSI's for some months now and have yet to get auto guiding to work... mainly the weather that has prevented me but am I frustrated yet...no! no! I tell myself and thank goodness I believe everything I tell myself even a little porker like the one I mention.
But it is always nice to hear about the frustrations of others ...hang in there Mike all things are sent to build ones character and resolve.
alex

[h0ughy]

sorry to hear you are starting from scratch mike - must look for your earlier stuff and find out what happened your laptop

[sheeny]

Ah, I sympathise, Mike! My experience with these sorts of time crunched situations has had similar results, but usually for me it would probably be more terminal... like a corrupt windows xp disk, or some bizarre software incompatibility, or just can't find the software...:rolleyes:. You did well to get as far as you did I reckon... I would've flagged it away earlier I think - been disappointed too many times...:P

Al.

[iceman]

Thanks for the sympathy :) I'm downloading service pack 2 and all the windows updates last night/now. It should be up to date and ready to go sometime today.. and I don't need to re-install all my programs! Yay.

[rumples riot]

Hey Mike why didn't you just manual guide? Back in the old days of film (boy I am getting old LOL) we used to manual guide all the time. You could have manual guided and got some deep shots. I am assuming you use a guide scope with the Toucam. If so manual guiding is the last resort. It is still a very rewarding experience for me. Pete and I did this late last year and he got some images.

[davidpretorius]

ouch!!

i still remember Paul stern face at last years planetary camp when vista decided not to play nicely with his planetary camera.........

[edwardsdj]

Sorry to hear you've been having computer problems Mike :(

I'm sure you'll get it all back up and running soon :)

[iceman]

The laptop is up and running perfectly now.. got the DMK's and 350D all working nicely.

Now, of course it's going to be cloudy all week :( Always the way.

My new work laptop is faster than my old one, so I'll be starting to install all the "necessary" programs in the next few days :)

[avandonk]

I never talk about the failures and frustrations as it does no good to relive them.

One thing I will say how we all rely on a very long chain of hardware and software that is interwoven and if one link is broken the whole edifice falls down. Sometimes we forget how complex our systems have become.

The last straw for me is when everything is working and twilight has just ended and the the clouds roll in. It is enough to drive a man to drink! OK I am easily led.

All we can do is keep trying!


Bert