Interesting. I'll have to try that since I'm running Win7x64.

Thank you. I'm using 7 as well. I will take another shot at it this weekend.

I have stacked! I can't for the life of me figure out how to put the shot in this post, but I have one I am not ashamed of. I'm not going to put my name on it, but I am not going to deny it came the "Axis." If I can manage this in a downtown setting, I feel confident that a trip to a dark site would not be a waste. Thanks to everyone for the help.

Good news! Can't wait to see the results.

Tada! Arcturus. For the record, Arcturus is the only star visible to the unaided eye at this location within this field of view. I will be sticking to bright, slightly obvious things until I get my head around this whole process. This is 17 shots and four darks. DFA 100mm marcro WR @ f 8. Exposures 60 and 30 seconds (as elevation changed). ISO 400.

Weird. The stars are not pixelated in the original. They are nice and round.

Good effort though I'm not sure why you would have the lens @ f/8. Large f/numbers have a greater effect on the background and nebulosity than they do on stars. As it is a f/2.8 lens, I would use it at f/4 or if quality is not good enough, f/5.6. At f/4, the above should have an abundance of stars and stuff. Uploading images to sites seems to be universally detrimental to images; something you may have to live with unless someone else has any ideas.

F/8 is as open as I can get while doing anything resembling a "long" exposure. When I tested at f/4 (I think the sweet spot for this lens), I had to use ISO 100 and maxed out the exposure around 35 seconds - not enough to get the hang of the astrotracers abilities. I got loads of stars in one third of the frame and boatloads of streetlight, sodium haze in the other two thirds. Even with the lens hood, I have to battle the glow of the surrounding buildings. If I had greater post processing skills, I'm sure I could get around this. In the short term, I'm just trying to learn the process. Even stopped down, I can't run the ISO up enough to start understanding the noise battle. I still threw some darks in, to practice the workflow. I hope to get somewhere darker next weekend and do a proper job.

Those stars look good. 60 sec with a sharp 100 mm F2.8 will reveal lots of deep sky objects.