I sorry to hear that things aren't happening for you Rohan. Truffle has the right of it when he says the 8" is a great medium-small scope. The depth of field and clarity are fabulous for this particular type of scope. So persevere. If you haven't already done so some things to check are, do you have a daylight saving option, the scope hasn't defaulted back to the Norhtern hemisphere, your RA drive is centered (release the clutch, rotate the forks all the way in one direction, by hand and then rotate back one turn),
David, Tony and Wayn have hit it pretty much on the head. While I have the LX200 the principle is much the same, except the telescope fills in all the latitude, time etc details for me. Certainly train the drives, though I hadn't when I first go my scope and if functioned fine. (for me, then - I'm a little bit more discerning now). Unless I'm going to a new site I usually only use the two star alignment like Wayne, not the Automatic.
I had a similar problem when I aligned on a star after the autostar selected it, slewed to near it and then asked me to center and press enter. I of course centered the wrong star. after completing the alignment autostar still said "alignment successful" Go figure.
If all else fails, and I mean all else, go into your setup menu and reset everything to default. This means you will have to re-input all your user specific information including drive training info, but at least you will be starting with a blank slate so to speak. there are two main benefits of doing this. 1. If you have inputted somthing incorrectly accidentlaly then it will be erased and the new corrected info will then take over. And 2. You will really get to know your setup menu and manual
. I've actually reset mine 3 times (once accidentally so that doesn't count) simply for that reason - to get to know the menu items on the autostar.
BTW when Autostar slews to a star during alignment it intentionally doesn't slew directly to the star. It deliberately misaligns, so you hve to guide to the star. I'm not sure I understand why, but I seem to recall something about helping to calibrate the alignment process. Sorry i can't be more specific. I'll try to remember where i heard/read about that and let you know.
Good luck