Instead of selecting 'Update Driver' in the 'Driver' tab, choose 'Roll Back Driver' this time. The changes made on the computer power and the device driver should take effect, and your USB device will no longer report issues. Otherwise, try the rest three methods one by one.

1. Open Device Manager. Click View and select Devices by connection. From the tree, right-click the device and select Properties. In the dialog box for the selected device, click the Details tab.
2. Virtual COM port (VCP) drivers cause the USB device to appear as an additional COM port available to the PC. Application software can access the USB device in the same way as it would access a standard COM port. This software is provided by Future Technology Devices International Limited “as is” and any express or implied warranties.

Frequently Asked Questions - Alpaca Cross-Platform and Internet

What is ASCOM Alpaca?

ASCOM Alpaca is a new (2019) standard that provides communication between astronomy programs and astronomy devices on multiple operating systems like iOS, Linux, Android, and Mac, using the internet (which means WiFi-connected mobile devices and also astronomy instruments connected via WiFi). It also provides transparent communications with existing unmodified devices, drivers, and programs on Windows.

Will Alpaca change or break my existing ASCOM-compatible astronomy applications?

No. Windows ASCOM programs will remain compatible with no changes whatsoever. However, if you install ASCOM Remote, an add-on middleware package, your unmodified Windows ASCOM programs will be able to use devices and their Alpaca drivers on other platforms as they become available in the future. For example, you will be able to use a self-contained WiFi-connected focuser running Linux on an Arduino or other embedded controller, again with no modifications to your Windows programs.

Will Alpaca change or break my existing ASCOM-compatible devices and their drivers or control programs?

No. Windows ASCOM drivers will remain compatible with no changes whatever. However, if you install ASCOM Remote, an add-on middleware package, your unmodified Windows devices and their drivers will become accessible from from Alpaca-compatible astronomy programs on other platforms such as iOS, Android, Mac, and Linux as become available in the future. For example, you will be able to control your unmodified Windows-connected telescope mount and driver from an Alpaca-enabled iOS astronomy program.

Will the ASCOM Platform be changed by Alpaca? Will the tools go away or change?

No. The Windows ASCOM Platform will continue as it is. The beauty of Alpaca is that the expansion of the ASCOM ecosystem is provided by the ASCOM Remote middleware, a layered add-on that provides transparent access to the Alpaca-extended environment from the existing Windows ASCOM environment, with no changes needed to any Windows programs or drivers.

When will Alpaca-compatible devices and programs be available?

We don't know. It's a chicken-and-egg situation. We have the eggs, now we need some chickens. The astronomy software and device suppliers that use the other platforms will need to incorporate Alpaca to gain access to and from the Windows ASCOM environment. Other than installation and configuration of ASCOM Remote, nothing needs to change on the Windows side, however the non-Windows devices will need to add Alpaca interfaces, and non-windows astronomy programs will need to add the ability to use Alpaca to control devices. This should make life easy for mobile astronomy programs because Alpaca makes unmodified Windows-connected devices like telescope mounts, imagers, etc. directly accessible from WiFi.

Frequently Asked Questions - Windows Platform and Tools

The ASCOM Platform installer is asking for the Microsoft .NET Framework. There are so many versions out there. Is 4.x 'better' than 3.x? What should I do?

There has been confusion about getting the Microsoft .NET Framework installed. It is a pre-requisite to the ASCOM Platform. Please read the note for Windows 7 or Windows XP as it applies to you.

The ASCOM Diagnostics program gives me the error 'Incompatible Driver xxxxx. This 32 bit only driver won't work in a 64 bit application even though it is correctly registered as a 32bit COM driver. Please contact the driver author and request an updated driver.' Does this mean that the application I want to use will not work with this driver?

This will almost certainly not matter. Most astronomy applications are at present (Jan 2018) compiled as 32 bits and will work with 32 bit only drivers, even on 64 bit versions of Windows. You are seeing this because the ASCOM diagnostics program is doing a full check and is reporting this to help driver developers know of this potential problem. If you see the same error when you try to choose the driver in the Application then this is a problem because the application is running as 64 bits and a 32 bit application will not work. Note: This is not under the control of the ASCOM Platform. We do not have the ability to compensate for this fundamental differences between 32 and 64 bit systems.

The driver installer shows the message “The ASCOM Platform 5 is required for this driver”

This is resolved for most drivers, see Platform 5.5 only installers for information on how to fix this for your driver.

Why Can't You Just Add Logic to Your Program to Compensate For My Device's Problem?

See the Correcting for Problems (also in the menu on the left).

Where can I learn about The ASCOM Initiative and its technology?

See the About ASCOM section.

How can I get support for my ASCOM driver?

See the Support page for details. Always start with the company or person from whom you purchased the device. Sometimes these people hire a temporary contractor to write the driver. Then that contractor disappears from the ASCOM scene, and maybe the entire astronomy scene. It's important that the device makers themselves realize that the driver often controls their customers' experience with their product or device.

How can I use TheSky™ in the ASCOM Environment?

Yes, TheSky is compatible with the ASCOM environment. See Working With TheSky (also in the menu on the left).

Why don't my scripts work on a 64-bit system?

Most ASCOM drivers and the ASCOM support components are 32-bit. If you run your script by double-clicking it or using cscript on the command line, it uses the 64-bit script engine. The 64-bit script engine cannot use 32-bit components. On a 64-bit system, you must use the 32-bit script engine for ASCOM scripts. The easiest way is to use a command shell like this:
c:whatever>%windir%SYSWOW64cscript.exemyscript.vbs (or myscript.js for JScript)

What is a Hub?

A hub is a program that allows multiple ASCOM astronomy programs to share a device. It looks like a driver, but it can allow more than one program to connect to it, and it in turn connects to the driver for the real device. Hubs can exist for any type of device. The diagram below shows a telescope hub only as an example.
The ASCOM Platform comes with two hubs, POTH and ASCOM Dome Control. In addition, the FocusMax program can act as both a focuser and a telescope hub.

What is POTH? What Can I Use it For?

See Using POTH (also in the menu on the left).

How do I enable and disable serial tracing?

Most drivers use the ASCOM 'Helper' component to do serial port I/O. For those drivers that do, you can capture a trace of the serial traffic to and from the device by using serial tracing. Beginning with ASCOM Platform 5.5, the Chooser has a Trace menu. Use this to set the location of the serial trace log and to turn tracing on and off.

Time on Windows is usually straight forward. For home computers (not joined to a domain), they simply get their time from an Internet source like time.windows.com and the main trick is just to adjust the time zone from Pacific Time to your own when you first get it. For domain-joined computers, they will pull the time from the domain controllers by default. If somebody changes those settings though, all bets are off.

Yesterday, I got to dive into a computer that had been setup by a vendor and was receiving a different time than the domain computers even though it had been joined to the domain. A configuration must have been changed manually somewhere, which meant I got to dive into all of these settings in order to track down where the change had been made. Through the process, I documented some commands and registry keys that help troubleshoot Windows time issues.

If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of. – Bruce Lee

When you start talking about time on endpoints, so much of it is perception. Enable a screensaver to kick on after 15 minutes and users will tell you that it locks the computer every 5 minutes until you take a stopwatch and time it. When working on a time sync issue, it’s important to know what you’re dealing with and simultaneously check the time on different devices to make your comparison. Run these commands from an elevated command prompt or as a script run by an administrator.

See what time the domain thinks it is:

I found this command useful as it was reported that three computers were all set at different times. I used the domain command and the following command to query all four devices for their time nearly simultaneously.

See what time each computer says it is:

After running the above commands, I found that one of the computers was about a minute and a half ahead of the others which were correctly pulling the domain time. It’s not enough of a difference to cause issues with Kerberos authentications but the computer is part of a fail-over system with logs that would have a hard time syncing up alarms with different timestamps.

See where the computer is pulling its time from:

After running the above command, it returned an IP address that meant nothing to me. It was pulling its time from some other server and that was the source of the problem.

You can ask Windows for its Windows Time configuration. It’s not very informative if everything is working properly but gives you something to compare to a working computer.

See Windows Time configuration:

The next commands are not going to do a whole lot of good if the computer pulls from the wrong source but they will be helpful once we can update the source.

Have Windows Time update its configuration:

Have Windows Time resync to its source:

Check each DC to see how much it differs:

Always in motion is the future. – YODA, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Other areas to check for Windows Time issues include Services, Event Log, firewall, and Registry.

Check that the Windows Time service is running and set to Automatic. You can restart Windows Time service from the command line with:

Check the event logs for any errors with the Time sync process.

The Windows Firewall needs to allow UDP traffic on port 123 for NTP to work.

The Registry has two locations of importance when it comes to Windows Time.

Time Sources

In the Registry, at the following path, you will find the default servers like time.windows.com and time.nist.gov as individual numbered entries. It was here that I found the IP address that the w32tm /query /source command returned. This told me where it was hard-coded but it wouldn’t do me any good to just remove the source. I wanted it pulling from the domain, not a NTP server directly.

Sync Source

The following path in the Registry is where I found the source of the reported problems. The Type entry was set to ‘AllSync’ instead of the default for domain computers NT5DS.

Name: Type

Value: NT5DS

The TechNet article on Windows Time Service Tools and Settings lists the possible values for the key. The page also documents other important Windows Time settings that you might check in case this isn’t the source of your problem as it was mine.

NoSync. The time service does not synchronize with other sources.

NTP. The time service synchronizes from the servers specified in the NtpServer registry entry.

NT5DS. The time service synchronizes from the domain hierarchy.

AllSync. The time service uses all the available synchronization mechanisms.

Drivers Time Domain Port Devices Download

After I changed it from AllSync to NT5DS, I ran the command w32tm /config /update and the w32tm /query /source command to see that its source was now a domain controller. I then ran w32tm /resync and watched it fall back in line with the other computers as time went on.