Resolved STT-8300WSG Failing to download images

I am raising this support request on the advice of Bill Lynch. He has supported me in the past and I sent him the message below to ask his advice, not knowing that he was now a part of Diffraction Ltd support team.

I live in the UK and I run my remote set-up, which is hosted in Spain, from my home. I operate all my devices using a PC in that observatory. I use SplashTop for remote access between my home PC and my PC in the remote observatory. However, my much loved workhorse, the STT-8300WSG is misbehaving. I give an account of the recent failures here.

First - a detail that may or may no be relevant:
Up to last November I was running all my set-up in Win7, but had to bow to the pressure (of Microsoft pulling support) and re-install everything on Win 10. Of course this included the SBIGusbdrv.dll.

Some 3 months ago I had problems with inconsistent connection and I installed a USB Switch that I could operate remotely to simulate unplugging and re-plugging the camera USB port. It needed some persuasion to get connection, but when it did connect it worked great. Until last week…

A week ago I had two great nights imaging. Three nights ago the camera connected first time and I could operate it both from the CCDSoft V5 S/W or SGP. All appears OK until download of the image from the camera to the PC at which point the camera control program seizes up. After a delay, an error message appears and the connection has to be closed. The error message says nothing except that the download failed. These symptoms are unlike any I have seen before.

As I use Splashtop, perhaps access to my remote PC may be the best way to go - to take a look for yourself and find the source of the problem.

Many thanks
Jan
Ravenshead,UK

 

Colin, I was very pleased and impressed at the speed of your reply - thank you!
Your suggestion was well considered. I was aware of this power management function and it's possible effect on our astro kit.
When I did the Win7 - Win10 conversion it went very smoothly and I was totally impressed that I did not have to re-install any of my programs. When opening up my scopes/cameras/guiders/focusers and filter wheels for the first time with Win10 there were no problems and all devices connected and performed as expected. I was mistaken, however in assuming that this power management control had been disabled as it was under Win7. As it happens, there had been no impact on the operation of any of my 5 usb devices and it did not occur to me to manually disable the usb power economy settings. However, there were still intermittent problems connecting the STT as described in my first note.
Regardless, I have now made the changes you highlighted.
The good and bad news is that all devices work, including the STT, but only the STT fails on image download and freezes before asking to close the program.
I am not dead in the water regarding use of my kit. I can switch to my second camera and a piggy-backed FSQ scope when the Moon moves away. However, I use the STT/AP155 for galaxy imaging and therefore would like to get this set-up working in time to take advantage of the Moonless sky in a couple of weeks time.
Any help to achieve this would be very much appreciated.
Jan
Ravenshead, UK

 

Hi Colin,
Done all these, including scrubbing previous driver checker installation and starting again. No change - Win10 not recognizing USB device in Device Manager but the camera still connects then freezes on image download.
Using CCDops I can't even get a connection to the camera. No idea why.
The camera has been working really well on Win 7 and Win 10 using CCDSoft and SGP. It is only in the last couple of weeks it goes AWAL at download. The Win 10 message has been appearing since I converted from Win7 but it was not preventing connection!
Looking at the history so far, I do not think that this is a camera fault. The question remains - why does it now fail on image download when nothing has changed in S/W or hardware?

 

Hi Doug,
I upgraded Doug. It was a couple of months later that I realised that I had not verified if the STT driver was correctly installed as I was using another camera through the winter.
It was suggested by a colleague of mine, Bob Franke, that I should check whether Win 10 had actually registered the driver. He still uses his STF and had knowledge of the camera. I followed his advice - went on-line and requested "how to register a DLL in Win 10".
None of the sites I visited gave me a successful way of finding out. I got on the way with one using cmd prompt but every variation of syntax I tried failed and I had to give up.
Perhaps you could give me some guidance on how to clean the Registry entries and ensure that the Driverchecker64 gets correctly registered?

 

Hi Colin,
Thanks for the detailed procedure. It's 11.30 pm now so I'll test it tomorrow and get right back to you

 

Hi Colin.
Ran through the excellent "clean-up" procedure you provided.
Unfortunately it has taken me a step back - the camera will not connect at all now.
I can see that the driver has been found by Win 10 as it briefly blinks the USB Device line in Device Manager. It then returns the message:
"Unknown USB Device ( Device Descriptor Request Failed)"
In device status it says "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)" and :
A request for the Device Descriptor failed.
Looking this up on the web I get this:
The "error 43" error is commonly caused by incorrectly configured system settings or irregular entries in the Windows registry. This error may be fixed with special software that repairs the registry and tunes up system settings to restore stability.
So it looks like your advice was the right thing to do. What I don't know if there are any bad registry entries that have been left. I can see that your procedure should have sorted that out but maybe I've made a mistake somewhere on the way.
I'm not confident playing around with the Registry - is it something you can do?
As I am remote from my observatory PC there can be mistakes made when doing simple things as the response time varies between the PC's so I have no better feel for the situation than you.
Any ideas?
Many thanks, Jan

 

Hi Colin. I decided to do a system restore to just before my last successful STT image session. Then did a full re-install of the Driver Checker etc and updated the driver. It made no difference – the STT still connects, changes filters and takes images but as soon as the download of the image starts, the camera locks up and the download fails. Win10 also continues to report that the last USB connected USB device is not recognized and this continues to show up in Device Manager as Device not recognised and yellow flagged.
If you would like to link up to my PC - just let me know when is convenient and I'll give you a Team Viewer log on.

Regards, Jan

 

Colin - I do apologize.
I was sure that I had replied to your post re the USB switch. I had actually forgotten what the maker's name was and had to look it up.
My old age must be getting the better of my memory.
The USB switch is Yepkit USB switchable hub. Mine is a 3 port USB2 external device.
I have the Mount connected to one port, the Moravian G3-16200 camera to the next and the STT to the last. There are no problems with the mount or G3 camera. I have a separate external Power Switch so I can cycle power to all my devices.
By the way, if you want to have a remote connection, I now have either TeamViewer or Splashtop available.
Regards
Jan

 

Hi Colin.
I am on UTC+1, ie British Summer Time. 5 hour time difference.
On Tuesday I can be on-line from 4 pm BST onwards. Is that OK with you?
Which system do you prefer to get on-line to my remote PC :- Team Viewer or Splashtop?
- Using TV means I do not have to give you my fixed password as in would do using Splashtop.
- On the other hand I'm finding link reliability is rather better in Splashtop.
On balance TV would be best for me.
Regards
Jan

 

Colin - sod's law applies. The planned remote access to my PC is abandoned for today at least.
The remote site in Spain has lost all broadband connections. Looks like a local area wipe-out.
I'll be back to you when I know we can get access.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
Jan