as can be seen my dancing red and yellow squares not around the stars as they should be when I tried this the other night they were all congregated at the bottom of the screen there is no way I can set up polar alignment with this
and again
I decided to switch from this version to the beta 3.1 and the first problem there was you could not click the OK button -- shut down and retry same -- once more and I got in.
this looks more promising as we now see yellow squares around stars BUT it clouded over should be clear around 05:00 will retry
your biggest problem seems to be not enough stars visible - your screenshots don't show your exposure/gain, but usually a good start is to set maximum or near maximum gain and a 2s exposure.
Then the star detection settings are all a bit random - you've obviously tried adjusting all of these to get it working and got into a bit of a mess. Set them back as follows:
Noise Reduction : 1
Min Star Width : 1
Max Star Width : 32
Black Level : 20
Digital Gain : Off
See how that turns out - turn the exposure up to 4s if that helps to get more stars, then try setting 2x digital gain as a next trick. If you are still having trouble, please use the 'snapshot' button to capture an image of the view from your camera/scope and send it to me.
Ah wait a min I did not set any of these - these were what I believe to be the DEFAULT SETTINGS
I had set 4s exp and about 200 gain if I go above that it starts to get whiter around in the middle of the picture - will get some shots when next out
Just as a note, when you first use a new version (ie 3.1), it takes all the settings that you have for the most recent previous version (ie 3.0) and copies those. After that the two are independent - ie changing a setting in 3.1 will not affect 3.0 (and the other way round) - so maybe you changed those in 3.0?
oh dear you have lost me, there again, at 73 that's quite easy I have a SBIG STV (12 years ish) and never could get that to work except for moon and planets
now my question has to be if those from the program are the default then where did these I have, come from, as I HAVE NEVER SET any of these parameters, they where there when I switched the program on
Well, oddly I've had another crash report recently that seemed to be caused by impossible changes to the settings, so maybe something weird is going on that I haven't figured out yet.
Anyway, if you adjust the settings to the suggested values you should do a lot better - if you still have problems please snapshot a frame so I can see what the stars look like.
will do -- you know the old saying -- theres always one more bug, I must admit I like what this program is trying to do I have spent endless hrs try to set polar alignment by Meade,s instruction manual since acquiring the super wedge. I am pleased with my M42 and Betlegeuse pictures so I shall get there I am sure.
Was out at 05:30 set up with Ver 3 and your settings but gave up after a while Switched to Ver 3.1 and success, at One point had EXCELENT within a short time BUT when I tightened every thing down I ended up with FAIR turned scope on to a couple of stars and although was out I know I can now achieve my objective. As I have ver 3 pro I look forward to the release of Ver 3.1 and one last point the OK control work as it should
as can be seen my dancing red and yellow squares not around the stars as they should be when I tried this the other night they were all congregated at the bottom of the screen there is no way I can set up polar alignment with this 
this looks more promising as we now see yellow squares around stars BUT it clouded over should be clear around 05:00 will retry 