StarTools

Hi Ivo,

Good afternoon from Assam, India. Just a few days back, I purchased ST and installed in my Windows 10 (64-Bit) desktop. But I am unable to even test it as the software hangs every time it tries to process. The progress wheel becomes stationary and even the cursor does not move. Then I have to force shutdown the machine. I seek your kind help to overcome this problem. BTW, I have been using PixInsight in this same machine without a single problem.

Regards.

Rajib
Digboi, Assam, India

Hi Rajib,

I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble.
Can you give me full specs (CPU, RAM, space free on hard drive). Does the 1.4.x version exhibit the same behaviour?

Does the hard drive (or SSD drive) do anything? Can you open the task manager? If the whole system freezes, it doesn't sound like a software problem but rather a hardware problem (a system application should never be able to completely freeze the OS). Does it happen when your system runs hot?

Thanks!

Hi Ivo,

Highly appreciate you for showing your concern to my problem. I will check the details as asked by you and will post you the same once I go back home from my office.

Thanks .

Rajib

Hi Rajib,

Did you get it working?

Do let me know if you need assistance with figuring this one out.

rlsarma wrote:Hi Ivo,

Good afternoon from Assam, India. Just a few days back, I purchased ST and installed in my Windows 10 (64-Bit) desktop. But I am unable to even test it as the software hangs every time it tries to process. The progress wheel becomes stationary and even the cursor does not move. Then I have to force shutdown the machine. I seek your kind help to overcome this problem. BTW, I have been using PixInsight in this same machine without a single problem.

Regards.

Rajib
Digboi, Assam, India

I've just a got a new machine and have been having the same issue.

Windows 10 pro
Intel core i5 M560 @2.67GHz
Installed RAM 3GB, 2.8 usable
Using 8GB USB for ReadyBoost
The whole system freeze up and have to 'power button' off
My last machine had the same RAM and had no issue what so ever, maybe a bit slow, but still could manage the modules.
any help would be most appreciated

Cheers

Phil

Hi
Further to my post regarding the above. I use a Canon DSLR, and Deepsky Stacker, so that's the first part.
Thinking about things logically, there must have been some type of change in either the data (image) or the software from this set-up to my previous set-up that I was using. I went with data... only because at my level of AP, it more likely to be my error rather than an ST error!
I changed one of the settings on DSS, (use super pixel) which reduces the size of the image. Since doing that I've had no issue with the system freeze as described above as this now produces an image that is easier to manipulate.
So.... if you are experiencing the same type of issue, and by reading some of the posts on the forum, there are folks with similar issues, look at reducing the data within the image (size) and or increasing the RAM of the machine, I think this issue may only be where there is not enough RAM installed, increase the RAM or reduce the size and the issue should be more controllable.

Cheers

Phil

[quote="rlsarma"]Hi Ivo,

Good afternoon from Assam, India. Just a few days back, I purchased ST and installed in my Windows 10 (64-Bit) desktop. But I am unable to even test it as the software hangs every time it tries to process. The progress wheel becomes stationary and even the cursor does not move. Then I have to force shutdown the machine. I seek your kind help to overcome this problem. BTW, I have been using PixInsight in this same machine without a single problem.

Regards.

Rajib
Digboi, Assam, India[/quote

Hi Rajib

I've been looking in to this a little more as I've had a similar problem. As I suggested in previous post, I reduced the size of the image by using the super pixel mode in DSS. However as this combines the pixels and takes the highest value and assigns that to the new pixel there is a good chance that you will lose some of the dynamics of the image.
Rather than do that, I loaded my image to ST, and immediately set the BIN module on the image, for me, 35% was fine and once processed with this module ST operated with no issue what so ever, and more importantly, the Laptop did not freeze/crash.
Now I'm sure that my thinking as far as a mathematics point of view is concerned is probably way off! but this initial work flow was a solution for me and it worked, however I would be interested to hear the thoughts of others on my solution or if there are any other solutions without binning the image.

Keep lookin' up! you never know what you'll see!

Phil

Thanks for the update Phil.

StarTools is indeed a memory hog (by design) and very taxing on virtually all components of a system (RAM, CPU, storage).

If the system runs out of RAM on 64-bit machines, it will start using storage memory to supplement RAM. Needless to say, this is very, very slow.

With larger datasets, even 8GB can run out quickly. The obvious answers are to add more RAM, or indeed process smaller datasets.

For more information on binning and the benefits (and sometimes necessity) of this procedure beyond just creating a smaller data set (binning is not just simply scaling down a dataset!), have a read here;
http://www.startools.org/modules/bin/usage