help with spyder3 pro

I'm trying to calibrate a dell desktop LCD monitor useing spyder3 pro. it says "sorry an error has occured". but doesn't give me any idea how to fix the error.I have tried with and without ambient light. It has told me to increse the light and than after I try to calibrate it says to decress the light. I have tried E-Mailing spyder3 twice but have not got a response. On 2 attempts it has finished the calibration even after the error messages.The before and after is very small, tried printing and see no diffrence. So do I have a bad spyder or what should I be doing that i'm not?

I'd turn off the ambient light check, keep the lights dim, and see how it goes.

As said, disable any ambient light function....

Start over by rebooting your computer, reset the monitor to all default factory settings, and wait 30 minutes for the monitor to warm up and stabilize.

Now lower the Brightness to about 20%. Don't touch any other settings.

If you have the newest ver. 4 software, you can choose the very common settings of 120cd/m2 luminance, 6500k temperature, and 2.2 gamma.

The monitor should be in Custom Color preset mode via the OSD, so you have access to the RGB sliders.

Now rerun the software, ONLY tweaking the Brightness and RGB controls as needed.

m52 wrote in post #11674929
...tried printing and see no diffrence.

Of course... You are calibrating and profiling the monitor, not the printer. Once you've recalibrated the monitor to a reasonable luminance level for photo editing, try re-editing, softproofing and reprinting one of your photos. Also, print a standardized test image (with no adjustments) just to make sure your printer is operating correctly.

One thing that made a difference for me using Spyder3, plug it into a USB port that is on the motherboard.

I've had no issue using a USB port on my previous HP LP2065 and, now NEC but they do warn that it is better to plug it into a port on the computer itself.

These pucks are very sensitive to power supply and power fluctuations. Optionally, it's OK to plug into a powered USB hub, but a direct, unshared motherboard connection is best.

Thanks for the replies. Tony tried just turning off the ambient and still got the error message. Chas I have the spyder pluged into the usb on the back of the computer, I rebooted, set the monitor to default, waited 30 minutes, lowered the brightness to 20% I have version 3 not 4. picked the RGB slider and then 6500 tempature and 2.2 gamma It did start I adjusted the red and green and while adjusting the blue when I hit the update I stated to get error messages. saying an error has occured. I tried to change to 5800 temp and 2.2 gamma but all I can get now is "sorry an error has occured"I guess i'll try to reboot and start over.

O.k. I rebooted and tried again with the 6500 and 2.2 settings. This time I got A diffrence of .03 on the RGB and 6528 kelvin and it completed with no error message. If the .03 and 6528 don't sound right I'll try to recalabrate, but for now i'll try it this way and see if it makes a diffrence. Thanks again Tony, Chas,Kent and bohdan.

m52 wrote in post #11682792
O.k. I rebooted and tried again with the 6500 and 2.2 settings. This time I got A diffrence of .03 on the RGB and 6528 kelvin and it completed with no error message

That's an excellent result. I think the errors came from your monitor not being able to go to 5800k. With consumer level monitors, it's usually best to stay at either native temperature or 6500k.