Backyard EOS on a virtual machine.

[Bluester]

I had a go at getting Backyard EOS working with my camera some months ago (An old camera, a 350D) and had no end of trouble, never managing to get the camera to connect. I had another go today and finally found the right driver to get it to connect and camera control was working properly, I still need a serial cable for bulb but that is a different issue.

 

The problem I am having is my only reasonable way to run the software is under a virtual machine on a Windows 7 laptop, with Windows XP running on the VM, every time I reboot the VM I get a fingerprint error when starting BYE and it demands revalidation and while it revalidates OK, I naturally run out of validations in short order. I did run into this error last time I tried to get it working but given I never got it to connect to my camera I never went any further with it.

 

Is there a limitation on running BYE on a virtual machine?

[admin]

Thanks for the information. The laptop is 64 bit. I did at one stage have it properly dual booted with WinXP but it was a complete nightmare to install to begin with and then a pain to maintain. Seeing I seem to have managed to get it running and working with the camera it is feasible to use BYE now so I will probably build a dedicated astro machine either with a 32 bit copy of windows 7 or with WinXP.

 

How many activations are available before I run out? I may be able to get through for now by pausing the virtual machine and saving it's state rather than shutting it down and restarting it.

 

Trials can be activated 3 or 5 times, I forget.

 

Purchases can be activated 20 times, but the limit is only there to prevent massive distribution.  I can increase on an individual level if need be.

 

Regards,

[admin]

BYE requests a computer hardware unique identifier and ties the activation key to that unique ID.  If your VM changes that value at each startup then it is seen as a completely different PC each time from the activation server.

 

If your Windows 7 laptop is a 32 bits version of Windows 7 installing the 350D drivers on that host OS should also work... but if it is a 64 bits OS than it will not work... and a VM is needed as you found out.

 

The other alternative to a VM is to use dual boot and have a 32 bits OS on the second boot partition.  This way you do without the VM.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Regards,

[Bluester]

Thanks for the information. The laptop is 64 bit. I did at one stage have it properly dual booted with WinXP but it was a complete nightmare to install to begin with and then a pain to maintain. Seeing I seem to have managed to get it running and working with the camera it is feasible to use BYE now so I will probably build a dedicated astro machine either with a 32 bit copy of windows 7 or with WinXP.

 

How many activations are available before I run out? I may be able to get through for now by pausing the virtual machine and saving it's state rather than shutting it down and restarting it.

[Bluester]

OK, I am happy enough to buy now, seeing I have resolved my issue with connections. Before then I obviously could not sort it out.

 

I have worked out when it breaks, it is OK if I restart the virtual machine but if I restart the physical machine it then throws the fingerprint error, so every hard restart will cost me an activation until I can build a dedicated machine with a 32 bit Windows install.