Jon,
I share your pain.....
I'm a AstroArt user (over 15 years!) and although I love it and it works 110% for my spectroscopy needs, the in-built plate solving routine has always been a bit hit and miss..]
I was introduced to ASPS earlier this year as an alternative - and I've got to say it seems to work 100% for me - when using raw camera images, it does also work on other jpeg images (someone said if you had a Xmas card with stars on it, it would also solve them!!) I never found it that good....
http://www.astrogb.com/astrogb/All_S...te_Solver.html