StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Hey guys, my scanner's being really, really shitty and I can't understand its behavior. If anyone can give me some pointers, it'd be greatly appreciated.

I have a WIA HP 4600 vertical scanner.

Sometimes when I go to the scan option in my art program, it doesn't see my scanner! Oops, that's bad, plug it back in enough times and the scanner will be recognized. Okay, great. But from there, if I try to scan, it gives this strange endless "Transferring..." message that freezes the program attempting to scan. Therefore, I turn the scanner off, then on again. Often it is not recognized for several attempts (from three to twelve) of turning it off and on or replugging in the USB cable (both seem equally slightly-but-not-very effective.)

Repeat until "Tranferring..." message no longer shows up, and it randomly decides to actually scan. Then go back to being completely shit... .

This is really irritating me. Is there something wrong with my program? Why is it not recognized so often by my computer? What's with the endless freezing "Transferring..."? Both of these are annoying aspects of my scanning .

What version of Windows do you have?

Does it only happen with that program, or with any program?

Is there another computer you can try the scanner on?

EDIT: Also, has it always behaved this way, or has it recently cropped up?

Does it scan with any other programs?

Also, the WIA HP 4600 scanner does not exist.

but a HP (Hewlett Packard) 4600 scanjet does exist.

HP 4600 scanjet

halting or slow scanning problems

Enigma wrote:but a HP (Hewlett Packard) 4600 scanjet does exist.

Quite you!

Pick: Did you install the drivers that came with the Scanner?

Uraniun235 wrote:What version of Windows do you have?

XP Home Office, I think.

Does it only happen with that program, or with any program?

It doesn't work in any other programs, either.

Is there another computer you can try the scanner on?

It doesn't seem to do this on my laptop, after trying it out.

EDIT: Also, has it always behaved this way, or has it recently cropped up?

It's done this before, but never this badly .

Dominus wrote:Did you install the drivers that came with the Scanner?

Yes. Long ago.

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Hmm, after reviewing their troubleshooting, this still doesn't seem right. It doesn't work any better with all other programs closed, and I have a gig of RAM (that should be enough, right? It says so on the manual... .) I guess I should increase my virtual memory size though. I guess I missed that first time through... .

Thanks, guys!

Pick wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote:What version of Windows do you have?

XP Home Office, I think.

---

Hmm, after reviewing their troubleshooting, this still doesn't seem right. It doesn't work any better with all other programs closed, and I have a gig of RAM (that should be enough, right? It says so on the manual... .) I guess I should increase my virtual memory size though. I guess I missed that first time through... .

Thanks, guys!

OFFICE IS NOT A OS!!! (You have home)

Pick you have plenty of memory for a simple scanner ( 1 gig is stadard for gaming rigs)

Whatever the problem is it is allmost certainly not with the program. Recognizing the scanner is the job of the OS. Unless the scanner doesn't show up in the Device Manager your system does recognize it's there period, Pick.
The spotty nature of the plug/unplug method leads me to believe that you've either got a hardware (USB ports/scanner/cabling) issue or a driver one (USB drivers/scanner drivers).
Uninstall the scanner, reinstall it with the latest drivers, if that doesn't work uninstall the USB ports reinstall with the latest drivers, if that still doesn't work try a different cable and after that I'm stumped.

This is probably not a cable issue as she says it works fine on her laptop.

I'm going to try to reinstall the driver. Should that do it?

It may. Go ahead and try it.

... it does not seem to work any better now. This is highly inconveneint.

Did you uninstall the old drivers and install the latest ones, or the ones that came on a disk with your scanner?

Just out of curiosity, do you know what chipset is inside your desktop computer?
I had some strange intermittent USB problems with an external hard drive and both my old nForce2 AXP system and the nForce3 A64 system that replaced it.

I switched to a VIA K8T800 based A64 board and the problems went away.
If your system has a non-Intel chipset in it, you might want to reinstall or update your USB drivers (in addition to the scanner's drivers) to the latest versions.

And if you decide enough is enough and buy a new scanner, IMHO the best one you can get for under $150 is the Canon LIDE 60 for around $80.

Well, I got rid of the "Transferring..." problem, but the inability to recognize my scanner now persists.

I've reinstalled the driver, but it hasn't been any use. I used the driver off of the HP website, since I can't find my disc.

Edit - oops, no. Got it to work for a second and it still does the "Tranferring..." message problem.

try romoving it and untistalling it completely and then restarting and then treinstalling with the latest drivers.

That is what I did. I said I reinstalled the driver.

By the way, when connected, MS Paint gives a different reply - "Unable to retrieve image from device. Verify the device is properly connected and try again."

Whats the OS on your laptop and how old is the scanner?

If its from '01 or earlier it could be that it's simply flaky with modern Windows (I'm guessing you have XP home by what you wrote). Had one of those before...

If your laptop on the other hand is also modern (Win XP), then I'd guess that it's a software problem. An extreme attempt to solve it would be to reinstall Windows on your computer, then first install the newest chipset drivers for your motherboard and then the newest scanner drivers. Less extreme would be reinstalling the motherboard drivers and then the scanner drivers or buying an card with extra USB ports.