Has anyone had success install the ASCOM 5a drivers on one of these machines? I've failed several times. It seems to halt the installation when trying to register a rotator simulator.

I got a new lap top. Initially for Processing and remote monitoring of a cheapo XP laptop.
But I'm leaning toward using it to run CCDAP, Maxim 5, TheSKY, Pinpoint and FocusMax. The ascom drivers are key.

Hi John,

Did you try to turn off UAC (user account control) feature in Vista? This may be one reason installation fails. You can turn UAC off in Windows control panel.

Another consideration is that the user account doing the installation, even if a local administrator, will still run software at a lower permission level than a full administrator.

To overcome this, you can right click on the setup icon, and select Run As Administrator to ensure that it's running with elevated privileges.

I've yet to install ASCOM 5 on my Vista computer, so don't know what else it might be...

Regards,

-Paul

John,

Just noticed that you are doing all of this on a Vista-64 computer. As far as I know, there are very few camera drivers available for 64-bit Windows, and none from SBIG. Without 64-bit drivers, you will not be able to use your camera, so CCDAP, Focusmax, etc. will not work.

Before proceeding much further down this path, first verify that you can use your camera with Vista-64.

Regards,

-Paul